Teams of students from Huntsville City Schools in Huntsville, Alabama, were recognized for their exceptional cybersecurity skills in the State Round of CyberPatriot 18—the 18th season of the Air & Space Forces Association’s National Youth Cyber Defense Competition. Two teams from Huntsville High School and the Mountain Gap Middle School team were named Alabama State Champions, sweeping the top awards for Huntsville City Schools.
Huntsville High School dominated the High School division with champions in both the Open and All Service divisions of CyberPatriot 18. This marks two consecutive years of success for the Open division team. The Mountain Gap Middle School team also achieved a second consecutive victory.
Seniors Andrew Buchholz, Walker Williams, Zyaan Kahn, and Austill Baker, along with junior Owen Brown and sophomore Sam McMillion from Huntsville High School, were named Overall State Champions and Open Division State Champions. They placed in the top 2% out of 4,164 high school teams registered for the competition, earning a spot in the National Semifinals, held January 22–24. Andrew, Walker, Zyaan, and Sam were also part of last year's State Championship team.
The All-Service team from Huntsville High School includes seniors Carson Mignano, Trip Mosby, and Denson Chatfield, along with juniors Lydia Gifford and Amir Lopez. As members of the school’s Space Force JROTC unit, they competed against all JROTC and Civil Air Patrol units across the state to win this prestigious honor.
The Mountain Gap Middle School team consists of Brayden Weimer, Miles Crackel, William Zupko, Michael Estrict, and Brian Lipscomb. They competed against other middle school and junior high school teams in two rounds of competition and earned their spot in the National Semifinals. Additionally, the second-place team from Mountain Gap Middle School placed fourth in the state and qualified for the next round.
Coaches
The Huntsville High School teams were coached by Jim Morse, Lead Huntsville City Schools Cybersecurity Instructor and Huntsville City Schools CyberPatriot Center of Excellence Lead, and Col. David Murphy (ret.), a retired U.S. Air Force officer, JROTC lead at Huntsville High School, and coach of the school’s StellarXplorers engineering team. The Mountain Gap Middle School team was coached by Doug Platt, a long-time STEM instructor at Mountain Gap Middle School.
About CyberPatriot
Established by the Air & Space Forces Association in 2009, the CyberPatriot National Youth Cyber Education Program aims to inspire, educate, and motivate students toward careers in cybersecurity and other critical STEM disciplines.
At the core of CyberPatriot is the National Youth Cyber Defense Competition, where teams of middle and high school students step into the role of newly hired IT professionals tasked with managing a network for a small company. In a series of online rounds, teams receive virtual operating systems and must identify and resolve cybersecurity vulnerabilities while maintaining essential services.
The first round of CyberPatriot 18 began October 23–26, with additional rounds held in November and December. Elimination rounds followed the State round, with only the highest-scoring teams advancing to the Semifinals. Following the Semifinals, 28 teams will advance to the in-person National Finals Competition in Bethesda, MD, in March 2026.