The students at Conestoga are celebrating after winning first in the state at the State CyberPatriot Competition and moving on to the semifinals. The competition challenges teams to fix and protect computer systems from security problems. “I am incredibly proud of this year’s CyberPatriot team. We were limited in our practices this year for numerous reasons, including the construction at the school over the summer.” Greg Page remarked. These students have worked super hard this year to make it to the semi finals “These students have stepped up and worked hard to make the best use of the time that we are able to get together,” Page said.

The team, made up entirely of Conestoga students, signed up after hearing about the competitions, and practiced on Monday afternoons for months in preparation for this day. They learned how to find problems in computers, fix errors, and work together as a team under a short amount of time and with lots of pressure not to mess up so the team would not lose points.

During the state competition, the team faced virtual computer setups full of errors. They split tasks between Windows and Linux systems and helped each other solve problems, including one system that would not update at first.

Winning first place at the state level is a big deal for the school. Now the team is preparing for the semifinals, where they will compete against the best teams in the region which is a very big deal considering they have only done it one other time in 4 years. “They were able to get first in our tier in the state competition,” Page exclaimed, “where we competed against schools that are much larger than we are. Excited to watch them compete in the National semi-finals.”

The semifinals will be a bigger challenge, but the team is excited and ready to show what they can do.