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LINCOLN, Neb. — Kristin Cordwell has been a winner before, but the excitement never gets old.

Jumping up, covering her mouth with her hand and shouting "Oh, my God," she welcomed her second win in a row this morning at the 17th annual Adventures in Supercomputing Challenge.

Cordwell, 16, was with a new team this year. She and teammates Erika DeBenedictis, 15, and Brian Lott, 17, won $1,000 each with a project that calculates cheap pathways for launching probes into space.

"It was a lot of hard work and a lot of good people helping us out," Cordwell said.

All three teammates' fathers work at Sandia National Laboratories. Still, the three were amazed that they won.

"I told her in January, `Oh, my God, we're going to win.' She said, `No we're not,' " DeBenedictis teased Cordwell this morning.

DeBenedictis is a freshman from St. Pius X High School; Cordwell is a sophomore from Manzano High School; Lott is a senior home-school student from Albuquerque.

Teams from across the state participated in the annual challenge, in which students try to create the best project using a supercomputer.

Five of the finalists were from Albuquerque, including two from Albuquerque Academy, one from Sandia Preparatory and one combined team from Eldorado and Manzano high schools.

The Sandia Prep team - Alexander Clement, Amelia Clement, Gregory Fenchel, Jeffrey Fenchel and Jayson Lynch - placed fourth.

On Monday, Cordwell and DeBenedictis didn't seem to be stressing about whether they'd win or lose.

During a break, they weren't even thinking about the past several months they spent making posters, solving math problems or calculating space trajectories.

They were just having fun competing with each other on the Rubik's Cube, which apparently has come back into fashion after its 1980s heyday.

"I can do it in 30 seconds," Cordwell bragged, reaching out for the cube to try to prove her mastery.

Playing with the cube was a good way to blow off steam after presenting their project, called "Optimizing Trajectories," the pair said.

Judges in Los Alamos on Monday winnowed 67 team projects down to 10 finalists. But it wasn't easy, said Sanjib Gupta, a judge and theoretical and mathematical modeler at the lab.

"I think some of these projects are really on the level of graduate student projects," Gupta said. "This is really professional level."

Team 38's presentation impressed him.

"These kids are very creative," Gupta said. "They worked through the mathematical models on their own. They worked through every step that a mathematical modeler like myself would do."

Another prior winner who made the finals was Punit Shah, 16, an Albuquerque Academy junior who was on a winning team two years ago.

Shah and teammate Jack Ingalls, 15, an Albuquerque Academy freshman, made up Team 7.

Their project, "Deriving Ramsey Numbers," is difficult to explain, but Shah gave it a try.

"It's used in any field that uses networking," Shah said. "Mathematical networking, computer networking, security networking."

The program can help people balance a computer system so that it is secure but also efficient, he said. "More connections in a system - called nodes - makes it more productive but less safe," Shah said. "Less connections is more safe, but less productive."

This was Shah's fifth year at the challenge. But for him, it isn't necessarily about winning.

"I actually think we made a positive contribution to this science," Shah said proudly. "I think we did."

Gupta agreed.

"They could have easily done this as an undergraduate project in college," Gupta said, looking at the boys' poster. "That's the level that many of these projects are at."

He recalled another one of the judges providing words of wisdom to the lone student from Albuquerque Academy's Team 8, Michael Wang, whose project is called "Robustness of Biochemical Oscillators."

"We had a doctor on the panel and the only thing she said was, `You shouldn't miss out on your social life,' " Gupta said.

It seems many of the kids haven't forgotten that.

Feeling a bit more satisfied with her time, Cordwell put the Rubik's Cube on the table so she could talk about her friends on Team 38.

The three teammates have complementary skills, Cordwell said.

DeBenedictis is an interactive programmer, she explained.

Lott programs numbers into the computer.

And Cordwell "does math," DeBenedictis explained, grabbing the cube from the table and mixing it up again.

Actually, neither girl is shaky in the math department. The two are taking a 300-level "discreet math" class at the University of New Mexico this semester.

"It's not like it's calculus," DeBenedictis said, rolling her eyes.

"We got a bunch of our friends to take it with us," Cordwell said, telling DeBenedictis to catch up on her calculus so they could continue to take classes together next year.

"I was trying to convince my mom to let me take calculus II in the summer, but she won't," DeBenedictis said with a sigh. "She doesn't want me to feel pressured. I guess that's good."

Looking down at the cube in her hand, she sighed and put it on the table.

"We should play Frisbee," DeBenedictis said to Cordwell.

Cordwell was happy to oblige, as the pair headed outside.

"Math nerds just love Frisbee," Cordwell said.