CyberPatriot will begin planning for the next school year as the CyberPatriot competition season ends. David Racovan, CyberPatriot leader and junior, said he hopes to improve the club’s preparation methods next year.

“My goal for the team is to place within the top three teams (in Indiana) next year and potentially get another Carmel team to nationals,” he said. “This is very ambitious, but I think it can be done with some more and better training exercises.”

According to CyberPatriot sponsor Carey Anderson, the team placed 6th place in the open division at the national finals competition, which took place from March 17 to 21.

“We beat out over 2,800 teams just to be in that spot we were in, which was the elite 12 in our open division. We just cut that in half and made it to 6th place, baby,” she said. “Now, we have (other) schools that know how to pronounce our (school’s) name and they know where we are, and we made a statement for the first time.”

Anderson said she encourages anyone interested in cybersecurity to go to their call-out meeting next year regardless of their cybersecurity experience level.

“Our gold division teams…won (1st place) in (their division at the state level last semester), and they were all what (we) would call rookies,” Anderson said. “I would tell students, ‘You can do this. Please come to our call-out meeting next year even if you have never worked in any kind of capacity (in) a cybersecurity field or you’re just curious. You have to dedicate yourself a little bit to (the club), but (competing for CyberPatriot) is possible for anyone.’”