The Carrollton High School CyberPatriot team is headed to the national competition Jan. 21, and CHS coach Robby Blakemore said the students worked hard to get this point. 

“I'm very proud of our program for making it this far. The team members increased their knowledge, event after event, to make it to nationals,” he said.

CyberPatriot is an education program created by the Air and Space Force’s Association to inspire K-12 students toward careers in cybersecurity or other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines critical to the nation's future. At the core of the program is the National Youth Cyber Defense Competition, the nation's largest cyber defense competition that puts high school students in charge of securing virtual networks. 

What does the CyberPatriot match look like? Blakemore says it’s six hours of tough competition.

“The competition challenges students to find and fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities in virtual operating systems like Windows and Linux,” he said. “Teams are scored on how secure they make the system. Top teams advance through the online round of competition, and the best of the best advance to the National Finals Competition.”

The team is made up of CHS Computer Science and JROTC students. The JROTC students advanced to nationals by winning first place in the Silver Tier for the Air Force JROTCs in Georgia.The team of Computer Science students finished in the top five of the Silver Tier, which earned a place at nationals.

Computer Science students competing are Benjamin Cannon, Brantley Colquitt, Kewin Dong, Joseph Ivey, and Logan Moore. CHS JROTC students participating are Austin Ennis, Kenia Galves-Hernandez, and Venkata Koppireddy.