Columbia, MO – Feb. 6, 2025: The Missouri Research and Education Network (MOREnet) congratulates the winners of this year’s annual Missouri High School Cybersecurity Challenge, the Captioners, from Pattonville High School. The team, which consists of students Elisha Dukes, Matthew Wasser and Rhys Harden, with teacher Stephanie Carson, finished with the top score of 965 points in the finals held on March 5, 2025. In total, 24 school districts with 227 students participated in this year’s event.
The challenge is a statewide event designed to both inspire and showcase the next generation of cybersecurity talent. The competition, which is funded in part by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) through computer science standard funding, featured a virtual preliminary round that included challenges to solve encryption, coding and cyber best practices and concluded with a final round during which 11 teams from six school districts (due to inclement weather, six of the 11 eleven teams attended virtually) completed challenges designed by CYBER.ORG, a nonprofit cybersecurity workforce development organization. The real-world challenges immersed students into a virtual networked environment full of Easter eggs, puzzle files and live devices where they were challenged to find, solve and access, respectively.
Each of the top three teams in the Cybersecurity Challenge was awarded a plaque, as well as bragging rights, prestige and the lessons learned through competition that are in ever-growing demand.
At the end of the full day competition, these three teams took home top honors:
First place: Pattonville High School Capstoners, Elisha Dukes, Matthew Wasser and Rhys Harden, with Stephanie Carson, teacher
Second place: Timberland High School (Wentzville) God Save the Queen, August Benne, Benjamin Jones and Aero Lautenschlager, with Quentin Lee, teacher
Third place: Fort Zumwalt West High School Jagwires, Blake Vaclavik, Saketh Subramanian and Varunrao Wallajabad, with Jeremy Rapp, teacher
This year’s competition was funded in part by Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education through Computer Science Standards funding. Because of that partnership, there was no charge to schools from Missouri who wanted to participate, allowing young people from every corner of the state to experience top-tier cybersecurity curriculum. Other courses MOREnet teaches aligned to computer science standards are free to any Missouri educator thanks to the same partnership with DESE. Visit our training schedule to see the list of eligible classes.
If you know a school or educator that would like access to the resources used to teach cybersecurity concepts, CYBER.ORG offers curriculum and educator materials at no cost to teachers or districts, thanks to funding from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Learn more on their website (www.cyber.org). There are also free training courses hosted by MOREnet technology integration specialists about those resources. View the training calendar and register for classes at www.more.net/trainingschedule.
