HACKENSACK — Hundreds of high school students sequestered themselves in Bergen County Academies Saturday for a student-organized "hackathon."

They brought laptops, neck pillows, sleeping bags and snacks and some 24 hours later, came out with finished projects, from program that encrypts text messages to a 3-D printed modular screwdriver to an app that fits you for eyeglasses.

The event was primarily organized by BCA students Jared Zoneraich and Edmon Berry, who cold-emailed sponsors and judges and managed to get responses from companies like Intel and Warby Parker and convinced big names in the technology industry like Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and Vine co-founder Colin Kroll to judge.

“I was just so floored by the moxie of the organizers,” Ohanian said of his decision to judge.

When the two first set out to host a hackathon, they expected 200 participants. By Saturday, there were 400 high school hackers huddled in the BCA gym.

They had less than 24 hours to use their coding skills to create a working project. Many were new to coding, but there were nearly 100 mentors on hand to help.

“That’s the main purpose,” Zoneraich said. “Not really the things they actually make, but the experience and what they learned from building it.”

Despite the help, it was a stressful undertaking, Ajay Benno, a 16-year-old from Methacton High School in Pennyslvania, said.

Benno and his teammates created Textcrpyt, an app that encrypts text messages.

“It was crazy because there would be periods of time when we would feel like we were confident and ready and we would commit a change and something would go wrong,” Benno said.

“We didn’t sleep last night,” Benno’s teammate Vinay Parakala said. “I’m feeling it now.”

And at the end, with no sleep and little time to prepare, they had to present their product to the judges. The top 20 teams had to do so in front of the entire assemblage of coders.

Despite how stressful it was, Susana Restrepo, an 18-year-old Bergen County Technical High School student, said she would do it again.

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“We learned so much more than we would have just going on the Internet and looking for tutorials,” she said.

Berry and Zoneraich said they would likely organize another hackathon next year.

“At peak times when everyone was wide awake and excited, it was packed full of mentors and sponsors just helping all the kids out from the beginners to the most experienced people,” Berry said. “Everybody was excited to help each other and that was one of the best sights to see.”