Joel Hollingsworth prepared and coached three Elon teams and accompanied them on November 7, 2009 as they participated in the ACM 2006 Mid-Atlantic Regional Programming Contest. The contest was held simultaneously at ten universities and involved 161 teams. Each Elon team was made up of three members:
The Elon teams competed at the Duke University location along with 23 other teams from Campbell University, Duke University, East Carolina University, Fayetteville State University, Highpoint University, Meredith College, North Carolina State University, UNC Greensboro and Winston Salem State University.
The test was extremely challenging and only four of the 30 teams competing at Duke solved a problem. The Elon team, Phoenix White, was one of these teams and finished in 4th place among the 30 teams at the Duke University site and 30th place among the 161 teams competing at all sites.
