R-MA CyberPatriot teams compete in national competition

On December 9, 2022, between 2:30 pm and 8:30 pm, the math room at Randolph-Macon Academy Middle School became the scene of a victory the students would not know they had achieved until after winter break.

One of R-MA’s two CyberPatriot teams at the middle school level won first place statewide. The other team scored well enough to proceed with the first-place winners to the semi-finals on January 20-21, 2023. The top three teams who come out of the semi-finals go to finals, and unfortunately, neither R-MA team achieved that position. “But both teams had fun,” said their coach, Michael Glotfelty. They look forward to the nation’s cyber cup in May, a jeopardy-style competition hosted by CYBER.org.

CyberPatriot, a national educational program founded by the Air Force Foundation in 2009, prepares middle school and high school students across America to enter the job market for cyber defense, should they choose to prefer that career path, and uses a round of competitions as a feature of the training process. With the competition on their mental horizons, R-MA’s young cyber warriors prepare by learning about multiple aspects of cyber warfare, including tasks and concepts relevant to the type of work the Department of Defense does every day. “Where many adults had to learn these skills in college and even grad school,” said Coach Glotfelty, “these kids have been doing cyber security since they were eleven.”

It makes sense that R-MA has a CyberPatriot presence at its school, as R-MA is committed to giving its students the best of the best. First, it gives them Coach Glotfelty, a man with thirty years of cyber security knowledge and a military background; as he meets with the students only once a week for an hour, it can be hard to impart everything he wants to tell them. “It’s rewarding,” he said, “that we have a generation of cyber warriors that will be starting off running when they enter the job markets where there is a huge shortage of skilled personnel.”

Even if they do not choose the cyber path, R-MA graduates are well-prepared for the future, as one hundred percent of them go on to matriculate at the best schools in the world. It is a co-ed private school for grades six through twelve. They even have an elite Air Force JROTC program, and in 2022, fifty-nine students graduating received over $16.6 million in scholarships. They can be found on the web at www.RMA.edu.

Watch a recent promo video on the CyberPatriot competition for some background information.