4 CTE STEM Academy Teams Competed in CyberPatriot Competition

Four teams of STEM Academy students from Robert McMann’s Cisco/CCNA Computer Networking Class at the Orange-Ulster BOCES Career and Technical Education Center recently competed in the New York State round of the CyberPatriot Competition.

Team C, which consisted of first-year students (left to right) Paul Denaro Chapel Field), Frank Riccard (Chapel Field), Glenden-Luke Stephens (Harmony Christian), Joel Racite (Chapel Field), and Alhussin Abouhajj (not pictured) (Middletown), finished seventh in the New York State Platinum Tier. They also finished in the top 20% of competitors nationwide.

The first-year Networking students in Team D; Tanya Esquivel Amudio (Middletown), Jewel Diaz (Minisink Valley), Connor Mahoney (Pine Bush), Damian Mann (Pine Bush), and Jonathan Bedward (not pictured) (Pine Bush), finished fifth in the New York State Gold Tier. 

Team A, which consisted of second-year students; Anthony Bonilla Velesquez (Middletown), Kendra Lucas (Pine Bush),  James Carman (Port Jervis), and Brandon Bethone-Robinson (Valley Central). 

Team B, which consisted of first-year students;  Zakara Masibo-Ballard (Cornwall), Jermaine Davis (Pine Bush), Ethan Wilder (Valley Central), (Matthew Fanning (Warwick), and Elijah Curtis (Chester), both finished in the Silver Tier.

While the teams will not advance to the semifinals, they did an excellent job competing against over 2,000 teams nationwide and in Canada. In the competition they were tasked with securing Windows and Ubuntu images as well as configuring various networks.

CyberPatriot’s National Youth Cyber Defense Competition 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. Top teams advance through the online round of competition, and the best of the best advance to the in-person National Finals Competition.