TopCoder VP of Membership, Tom Longo, addresses the crowd.

The Sweet 16

by MaryBeth Biondi, TopCoder Staff
Thursday, April 3, 2003
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Competitors representing schools such as Duke, Michigan, Minnesota, Stanford, and UCLA will face off this weekend in an effort to be crowned champion of a collegiate tournament. Is it the culmination of the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament? Nope, it's the Collegiate Challenge Finals - TopCoder style.

The field of over 500 college programmers has been narrowed to 16. By Friday, it will be reduced again to just 4. Saturday afternoon will see one coder presented with a very big check (in size and amount) and awarded the title of 2003 Sun Microsystems and TopCoder Collegiate Challenge Champion.

Tonight, however, we took the opportunity to relax and introduce ourselves to one another. 15 of the 16 competitors were on location at the time of the reception, and with 11 competitors new to the onsite finals, there were many introductions to be made. Fashionable red and black competition gear was handed out to all the participants - mandatory attire for the Final Four on Saturday. The crowd broke up shortly after the rules were laid out, and the competitors are hoping to get a good night's sleep before a very big day of competition tomorrow.

Here's the lineup:

Room 1, 10am:
evd
StefanPochmann
Yarin
yike

Room 2, 1pm:
axch
dmwright
mathewsb
niteneb

Room 3, 4pm:
ante
bstanescu
sjelkjd
WhiteShadow

Room 4, 7pm:
dgarthur
DjinnKahn
jburnim
O_O