By Abigail Mason
At McNicholas, students can participate in a program that helps get into fields of IT early in their high school career.
The Cyber Patriots is a group of students at McNicholas, involved in a bigger National Youth Cyber education program connected to the Air Force. The group works on activities sent from the Air Force to build technology skills. Students who are a part of this group work to find cyber security flaws and vulnerabilities.
“Our team is built of like-minded people who troubleshoot and secure systems and networks. We have a great time while competing, and we have a good laugh every now and then,” senior Ben Bernhardt said.
Starting in 2021, the Youth Cyber Defense Competition program is run by science teacher Mrs. Chrystel Blosser Wells and Business and Technology teacher and Department Chair Mrs. Jolene Esz. There are enough members to have two teams of competitors. Team One chose the name Little Bobby Tables and includes seniors Lou Smith, Will Homan, Ben Bernhardt, Cameron Goodin, and Kaelin Timko. Team Two chose the name Heatons Crew and includes juniors Issac Heaton, Nico Voegele, Tristen Barker, Alex Defife, and sophomores Hailey McPheron and Sam Osterbrink.
One of the cyber security projects the teams received to work on by the Air Force included three different virtual machines and a program portraying another computer. The three computers were all different using systems like Windows and Linux. By knowing specific software information, students worked with the time limit of four hours to find and fix pre-known security issues within the system.
Among the students who are a part of the group, senior Cameron Goodin and Ben Bernhardt worked on a separate program apart from the challenge, called Cisco. The two worked together, and reached 29.2 out of 3 given by the scoring board.
The teams include a variety of sophomores, junior, and senior students. Wells shared that “the students on the team know how to work well together.” Junior Alex Defife said that through cyber patriots he “gets to connect with people [he] shares interests with.”
Through working together within a four-hour time limit, the two teams were able to get into the gold division in 2023, the gold division again and semi-finals in 2024, and now will compete in the platinum division for the 2025 season. “It is impossible to win without my team. Every year I get better and I see it reflected in my team’s results,” junior Nico Voegele shared. He also stated that, “I feel proud of myself when I do well in cyber patriots and win because of the effort I put into the competitions to help my team to win.”
Esz shared that the group had a very successful year and past years, ranking in the top 10% nationally. Along with the rankings, past seniors in the program were offered scholarships to Gannon University located in Pennsylvania.
Through the week of December 8-14, the state competition for the Cyber Patriots happened. The senior team, Little Bobby Tables, is now ranked 1st in the state and will advance to the National Semi-finals on Jan 24. The junior and sophomore team, Heatons Crew, is ranked 4th in the state. Both teams are currently waiting for the Packet Tracer portion of their scores to be graded.
The McNicholas Milestone 