CWDHS teams to return to CyberTitan Nationals in May
March 1, 2022
FERGUS, Ontario — Two teams from Centre Wellington District High School are heading to the CyberTitan National Student Cybersecurity Competition Finals in May. Both the school’s Senior Co-Ed team, FalconTech Post Mortem, coached by CWDHS teacher Tim King, and the school’s all-female team MORPHEUS, coached by CWDHS teacher Eric Greig, will represent the UGDSB, Ontario and eastern Canada at this year’s cybersecurity finals.
To learn more about this incredible accomplishment, see the information below from teacher Tim King!
It was an incredibly difficult year keeping our extracurricular cyber-competitors going through four CyberPatriot rounds in ever-changing COVID rules. We couldn’t have done it without our principal, Jennifer Meeker, and our office coordinator, Cheryl Hincks, both of whom helped guide us through the gauntlet and keep our competition season alive. SHSM Lead Charles Benyair also did backflips to support us as we went up against top STEM schools from across Canada once again.
The students on these teams took on a challenging virtual academic extracurricular at the most difficult of times and performed superbly, improving as they learned new approaches through each round and producing outstanding results. In the State round in December, Tess on our senior team, produced the top Cisco network architecture score in Canada (and top 5 out of over 5200 teams world wide!), while our operating system security teams embraced automation and created some of the most advanced defensive scripting we’ve ever attempted.
This year Eric Greig, CWDHS’s new computer technology teacher, coached our all female team, MORPHEUS. Both coach and all students were juniors and rookies and were hoping to acclimatize themselves to the competition this year in order to take a competitive run at it next year. But thanks to team Captain Ashe and Coach Greig they quickly got a handle on the competition and landed themselves in the hunt for the top female team wildcard spot at the national finals. An outstanding marathon day in the international semi-finals of the CyberPatriot competition, run by the US Air Force Association and including teams from the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Australia, had team MORPHEUS battling to a top 25 finish nationally and clinching the top female wildcard spot in their rookie season!
Our co-ed junior team this year, led by Vlad, became our first junior team to become Platinum Tier and though they didn’t make it to the semi-finals, their outstanding performance means the future is bright for Centre Wellingtons’ cybersecurity teams.
CWDHS has always made a point of pushing back against genderized notions in STEM education and across all of our teams we have achieved even gender representation since 2019. Cybersecurity is a particularly male dominated field and Team Morpheus joins a long line of Centre Wellington young women competitors who have demonstrated that technology pathways are open to everyone.
The national finals will be held virtually on May 16-18th and CW’s cybersecurity teams will be ready to compete against top specialist STEM schools across Canada in a live, simulated network environment where hackers have taken control and they must regain control of the system. Everyone on both teams is excited for the challenge and the opportunity to represent UGDSB, Ontario and all of eastern Canada at this year’s event.