Published 4:27 pm Monday, August 17, 2026 TIFTON — A Tift County eighth-grade student earned high praise this past week for his outstanding achievement at a national level. Tift County Schools congratulated Eighth Street Middle School student Eli Ooten during the Aug. 13 Board of Education meeting for his stellar performance in the Junior Beta Computer Science Competition the previous school year, where he demonstrated the knowledge and technical talent to earn a first place title nationwide. TCS Chief Information Officer Dana Spurlin explained that the competition challenged students from around the country to pit their technical expertise, analytical thinking skills, and knowledge of coding, programming, and more against their fellow academics at both a state and national level. Ooten participated in the competition during his seventh-grade year, Spurlin said, where his high scores on the state level exams earned him second place out of hundreds of other Georgia students and easily secured him a spot to compete nationally. There, he completed a second exam under a tight 30-minute time limit, demonstrating his extensive knowledge of topics like binary code, data structures, and computer systems engineering to not only rank among the top 20 students nationwide, but progress to the championship finals in Nashville. Spurlin proudly reported that Ooten performed expertly during the competition’s final round, earning the highest score within the shortest amount of time among the…
*This content (including text, artwork, graphics, photography, and video) was provided by the third party(ies) as referenced above. Any rights or other content questions or inquiries should be directed to such third-party provider(s).
