The Garrett CyberPatriot program maintained its claim as one of the best in the State of Indiana during the recent State Round. Garrett Middle School took home its fourth consecutive State Championship. Garrett High School had two teams compete that each placed in the Top 15 in the state rankings.
“Our teams from Garrett faced the most difficult competition ever this year and performed well,” Coach Bill Thomas said. “It is always great to see students willing to do something extra to learn and represent our school.”
CyberPatriot’s National Youth Cyber Defense Competition is the world’s largest cybersecurity competition. It is sponsored by the U.S. Air & Space Forces Association and
challenges teams of high school and middle school students to find and fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities in virtual operating systems. Using a proprietary competition system, teams are scored on how secure they make the system.
The Garrett Middle School program has been in existence for just six seasons. In that time, GMS has placed second in the state twice before winning the State Championship each of the past four years. This year, Garrett Middle School was represented by Marshall White and Colton Wood.
“It will be great to see these students grow throughout their CyberPatriot careers,” Thomas said. “They have had a lot of success early on that should continue for the next few years.”
GMS was not only the best team in Indiana, but ranked in the top 20% nationally out of 754 registered middle school teams. Garrett also had the fourth-best score out of 20 teams in the surrounding area (Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, Illinois). The group has advanced to the National Semifinals on January 24..
Garrett High School has competed in the CyberPatriot program for over a decade, but this season was one of the best in GHS history. At the start of the season, nearly 2,900 teams nationally attempted to qualify for one of three tiers of competition in the State Round. GHS qualified for the second highest or Gold Tier, which consisted of the middle 40% of all teams nationally. Then in the State Round, Garrett had two teams competing that placed 10th and 15th out of 24 from Indiana.
“Some of these students have been part of the program at Garrett for six years while others took part for the first time,” Thomas said. “There were many new challenges this season and I look forward to seeing them improve next year.f”
The Garrett High School team included seniors Mahlan Dircksen, Brayson Heltsley, and Andrew Kelham as well as juniors Amy Colgan, Sydney Suelzer, and Avi Wingate as well as sophomore Dante Maslin and freshmen Kylie Bergman and Owen Fast.
This year, the group was guided by team mentors Nicholas Yoder and Nick Molargik. Both are Garrett graduates and alumni of the GHS CyberPatriot program.
“The success of the CyberPatriot program at Garrett has a lot to do with our team mentors,” Thomas said. “They do a great job of using their previous CyberPatriot experiences along with the knowledge of cybersecurity to make our team better.”
The Garrett CyberPatriot program is sponsored by Chapter 143 of the U.S. Air and Space Forces Association. That group, which helped to start the program at Garrett Schools, paid for registration fees as well as food and drink for every competition.
“Chapter 143 and its members have supported us from the very beginning and we are grateful for the relationship we have built with them over the years,” Thomas said. “They have supported many Garrett students in beginning a career in computer science and we could not have had this level of success without them.”