The Kent-Covington team of Graham Fricks, Logan Hoerth, Seth Johnson and Joshua Max – Boy Scout STEM venture crew members – placed third in the state finals of the U.S. CyberPatriot open division competitions, the nation’s premier high school youth cyber defense challenge.

Created by the Air Force Association in 2009 to inspire students toward careers in cybersecurity or other science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines, teams compete in a virtual arena against teams throughout the country as they race the clock to identify security vulnerabilities, spot weaknesses, fix glitches and secure the network.

Coached by Debbie Max and mentored by the IT professors at Green River Community College, the team earned the win by quickly and effectively establishing and maintaining secure networks in a series of increasingly difficult scenarios in which computer systems have been compromised.

The purpose of the competition was to tackle what President Obama has called “one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation; the cyberthreat.”