Garrett High School

The Garrett CyberPatriot program maintained its claim as one of the best in the State of Indiana during the recent State Round. In results released on Dec. 24, Garrett Middle School won its fifth straight State Championship. Garrett High School had two teams compete that each placed in the Top 20 in the state rankings.

“The Garrett program is successful because of the hard work of our students and mentors, “ Coach Bill Thomas said. “They are self taught and continue to build upon their knowledge throughout the season to perform at their best when it counts.”

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 seven seasons.  In that time, GMS placed second in the state twice before winning the State Championship each of the past five years. This year, Garrett Middle School was represented by Jay Garber, Samara Hill, Mason Smith and Marshall White.

“This is one of our biggest and best groups we have had in the past few years at the Middle School level,” Thomas said. “I am excited to see what this group can do as their knowledge grows over the next few years.”

GMS was not only the best team in Indiana, but ranked in the top 15% nationally out of 623 registered middle school teams. Garrett also had the fifth best score out of 28 registered teams in the region (Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, Illinois). The group from GMS has advanced to the National Semifinals on January 22.

Garrett High School has competed in the CyberPatriot program for 15 years, but this season was one of the best in GHS history. At the start of the season, over 2,800 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 17th and 19th out of 31 registered teams from Indiana.

“Our seniors this year were part of our first State Championship team at the Middle School level five years ago,” Thomas said. “They have been great representatives of our CyberPatriot program and Garrett Schools.”

The Garrett High School team included Seniors Amy Colgan and Sydney Suelzer, as well as sophomore Kylie Bergman and freshman Colton Wood.

This year, the group was guided by team mentors Nick Molargik and Nicholas Yoder. Both are Garrett graduates and alumni of the GHS CyberPatriot program.

“Our program could not reach this level without the hard work of our mentors,” Thomas said. “They have competed in CyberPatriot in the past and use those lessons along with real-world experience to guide our students.”

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 provide all of the funding for this program at Garrett Schools,” Thomas said. “There is no doubt that we have the best support of any team in the State. As a result, several of our students have pursued a career in cybersecurity or related fields. We are so grateful for all that Chapter 143 had provided to us throughout the past 15 years.”