ATLANTA—Three St. Pius X High School seniors have some additional funds for college after their finish in the statewide WebChallenge 2000 web page design contest.

John DeGeorge, Andy Estes and Thomas Zieg won $3,500 in college scholarship money after competing against students from almost 30 schools in 18 different prize categories. The team won first place for “Most Creative Use of a Theme,” second place for “Best Navigation” and third place for “Best Overall Site.”

The WebChallenge presents Georgia high school students the chance to compete for over $20,000 in scholarship money by designing and implementing a contest-specific web site. This year’s theme, “Building a Business Online,” coincided with various projects at St. Pius, where students have already established a presence on the Internet with their own landscaping and web page development company. In addition, the students have contributed work to the archdiocesan Jubilee web site and to numerous web pages for Catholic teenagers.

The winning trio of St. Pius seniors, after working with a few different ideas, decided to create “New York Next Door,” a fictional food delivery service specializing in New York cuisine.

“I wanted something really different,” DeGeorge said.

After deciding on the idea, Estes and Zieg implemented it while DeGeorge came up with the products and text for the site.

Inspired by last year’s winning sites, Estes knew that it would take more than just a catchy product line to win so he began working on multimedia content for the site. Zieg was given the daunting task of implementing a virtual shopping cart for the site that would let visitors “order” their products. As in similar real-world projects, the team found themselves working right down to the wire, even putting in a marathon 18-hour weekend work session to meet the deadline and polish the final product.

Jason Podhorez, system administrator at St. Pius and faculty advisor for the team, said that the team met the challenge “head-on.”

“They actually came to me and asked to compete,” he said. “In all honesty I had not even heard of the contest when John (DeGeorge) approached me with a team ready to go.”

More information about the WebChallenge, including links to the winning entries by St. Pius and other schools, can be found at www.webchallenge.org.