Stittsville’s Guardian Angels students excited to compete in the esteemed national Cyber Security competition

(Excitement is in the air at Guardian Angels Catholic Elementary School. Coached by teachers Krista Sarginson, Jackie McGrath, and community helper Marc Seguin, Grade 6 students: Anja, Paarth, Kush, Harrison, Ketan, and Rudy will be proudly representing their school in the prestigious CyberTitan National Finals. Photo: Stittsville Central)

Local elementary school, Guardian Angels has qualified for the CyberTitan National Finals. The school created a cybersecurity club for grade 6 students to come and compete in local competitions. The school has been competing in these competitions for the last 5 months and performing very well. So well in fact, they have qualified for the National finals.

Guardian Angels will be one of three teams competing in the middle school division and the only team from Ontario. The other two schools both residing in New Brunswick are no strangers to the tournament with one school being the reigning champions and both consistently being among the top in the country every year. This; however, will be Guardian Angels’ first year competing in the competition making them the underdog at this year’s competition.

Guardian Angels (CyberGuardians) was one of ten Canadian teams rising to the top among a playing field of 196 Canadian CyberTitans teams and 5,183 CyberPatriot teams around the world.

The team, managed and coached by teachers Krista Sarginson, Jackie McGrath, and community helper Marc Seguin has been a massive hit amongst the students. The 6 students making up the team are Anja, Paarth, Kush, Harrison, Ketan, and Rudy. I got the chance to go into Guardian Angels and sit down with the team. Being a week away from the competition the general sense of the team was a bit of nervousness, but an excitement and confidence for the event.

Talking to coach Krista Sarginson, she said “The fact that we made it to the finals means we’ve already won”. The team has tried to emphasize working together as a team and make sure that they are organized.

Talking to some of the students on the team about why they decided to join the club, I was very surprised by some of the very mature answers. A lot of the students discussed that having this experience will be able to open up many doors for them in the future and will be a great addition to their resumes in the future. Talking to these kids made it evident that they all had very bright futures, not only being incredibly skilled in cybersecurity, but also all being very well-spoken students.

The competition will take place on the 8th and 9th of May. This is the seventh year this event has been held and it looks to hopefully become a mainstay in both middle and high schools. The program currently has 19,000 students worldwide taking part and has shown an increase in participation every year. For more information on the event go to https://ictc-ctic.ca/news-and-events/news-articles/top-10-cybertitan-finalist-teams-progress-2024-national-finals.

Stittsville will be watching and cheering you on CyberGuardians!

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9 thoughts on “Stittsville’s Guardian Angels students excited to compete in the esteemed national Cyber Security competition”

  1. This is awesome!!!! Hope to see more students, especially girls, also get interested, participate and succeed like these bright young boys! Okay, I forgive those parents who park in the no-stopping zone near the school 😀 😉

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