PLUM SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL | ONE MINUTE READ
Plum Senior High School students qualified to compete in the Girls Go CyberStart National Championship this year. The Capture the Flag competition which will be held online on May 20-21, 2020, is an opportunity for each of the four young women below to win $400 and with a $250 cash prize going to their high school.
Girls Go CyberStart is a fun and interactive online program of digital challenges that introduces high school girls from across the United States to cybersecurity to promote safety on the Internet.
Alexandra George
Amelia Stezoski
Emily Stetzer
Angela Valotta
The competition is broken into three 3 stages: Assess, Game, and Compete which is the National Championships. The Assess Program Stage is the initial assessment that invites students to take on a set of fun and interactive challenges that represent realistic scenarios and threats faced by cybersecurity professionals. The following students participated in the Assess Stage:
Emily Brosius, Emma Killmeyer, Lily Klucinec, Maddie Quarles, Jamyson Roman,
Jensyn Roman, Emily Stetzer, Aleah Thornton, Alexis Thornton
Alexandra George, Amelia Stezoski, Angela Valotta
The Game stage focuses on self-learning through the use of hundreds of online challenges to develop an interest in security disciplines, such as Linux, cryptography, and programming. Students take on the role of a security agent, gathering information, cracking codes, finding security flaws and dissecting a cyber criminal's digital trail. Students develop their proficiency in using in-tool resources, working together, and researching techniques to advance to the next challenge. The following students advanced to the Game stage:
Emily Brosius, Alexandra George, Emma Killmeyer
Lily Klucinec, Jamyson Roman, Jensyn Roman, Emily Stetzer
Amelia Stezoski, Angela Valotta
To qualify for Nationals, at least one team member had to reach a certain level in the Game program stage. Several members on the Plum team met that threshold. They include Alexandra George, Emily Stetzer, Amelia Stezoski, and Angela Valotta were the top scorers.
Ms. Tamar McPherson, Math Teacher at Plum Senior High School, shares, “I am very proud of all of these incredible young women. Some of the challenges they had to solve were tough and it was a great experience learning how to inspect web pages, crack codes, code in Python, and use the terminal command prompt to navigate in Linux. I hope we can expand the team next year and get girls excited about CS!”
The teams started working through the various stages of the competition this past January and are very excited about the opportunity to participate in the National Competition.
Congratulations on representing Plum Senior High School!
For more information on Girls Go CyberStart, click here.