I'm a CyberPatriot National Finalist

I’m a CyberPatriot National Finalist

“I’m a CyberPatriot National Finalist.” That’s a sentence that only a few people can say, and I still can’t believe it myself. Today I’ll be answering (briefly) the who, what, when, where, why, and how of this accomplishment.

Who?

Our team isn’t exactly what you would think of as a nationals-caliber team. We do come from a pretty good technical high school that has had a CyberPatriot program for 8 years and has a Cisco IT/Networking program, but that’s pretty much it.

Only two of our team members are in that program, and three of us had never done CyberPatriot before. We come from a public high school, in a county with a severe budget deficit, had no funding from the school, and didn’t even have a real coach due to budget cuts. One of our parents, who has no background in cybersecurity, stepped up to lead the program. No team from our school had ever made nationals before (or came close). All we had was grit, and a whole lot of motivation by our team captain (check out his website: sakouk.me).

I want to emphasize that we aren’t complaining about this. Challenges make you stronger. This is simply to show that anyone can succeed; you don’t need to be from the fanciest schools with the best programs, you just need to work hard.

What?

The Air Force Association’s National Youth Cyber Defense Competition, commonly referred to as CyberPatriot, is the nation’s largest cyber defense competition that puts high school and middle school students in charge of securing virtual networks. Challenges include protecting and hardening Windows and Linux virtual machines, configuring Cisco devices in Packet Tracer, and web-based and Boeing challenges in later rounds. It’s a whole lot of fun, and if you want to do well, a whole lot of work.

When & Where?

This one is pretty self-explanatory. At our school, after school, in the library or various classrooms, we would compete alongside 4 other teams from our school in the 1st, 2nd, state, and semifinal round of CyberPatriot. The CyberPatriot 17 National Finals took place in Bethesda, Maryland from March 14th to 18th, 2025.

Why?

Why not? We joked about “oh, what if we made nationals,” but I don’t think any of us really believed it until after states. We placed in the top 50 in the platinum division, and our team captain and I really felt that we could make nationals. If private schools and teams in California with dedicated CyberPatriot classes and instructors could make it, why couldn’t we?

How?

This is the big question. We’ve been asked this by other competitors at our school and even other schools. I won’t get into specifics, as I still have 3 more years of competing and hope to make nationals in all of those years. The main answer is grit, determination, and a lot of late nights and early mornings. We had 3 hour long virtual practices every Sunday from states to semis, and we even had a 12 hour long practice at one of our team member’s houses. We used every practice image and resource that we could get our hands on (shoutout Cypat Discord), and have a pretty sizeable script.

Outside of the technical knowledge, a big part of it was team rapport and morale. We have some different personalities and levels of extro/introvertedness, but we all got along pretty well. It doesn’t matter if you have the smartest people on the planet; if your team doesn’t get along, something is bound to go wrong.

Closing

My first season of CyberPatriot has been absolutely incredible, and I am so excited for the next 3 years. My goal is to make nationals all 3 years and achieve the rank of CyberPatriot All-American, but who knows what will happen. Until next season, y’all.