Tyler ISD Technology Student Association (TSA) team members Cody Quinn (10th), Nicolas Gaffney (11th), and Rahul Myana (12th) won the National Championship, 1st place, in Cyber Security at the National TSA Conference in Dallas over the summer.
The team attended the competition briefing to receive their instructions and then had 48 hours to go online and solve as many security challenges as possible. These young men worked around the clock on their laptops, rarely coming out of their hotel room, solving cyber security challenges. When the competition ended two days later, they were more than 1,400 points ahead of the second-place team.
"All three of these students, Rahul, Cody, and Nic put in much hard work,” Chief Mike Baker said. "Their efforts and how they represented Tyler ISD, the Career & Technology Center (CTC), and our local Chapter 2355 of the Technology Student Association raised the bar. Congratulations to them on being National Champions!"
The national designation is awarded to students at the Leadership Conference & Competition each year. Tyler ISD Career & Technology Center TSA Chapter 2355 had five students advance to the National Competition in two events.
Previously winning gold medals for first place in the State of Texas competition in April, the Technical Problem Solving team consisting of 2022 Legacy High School seniors Connor Fiorentino and Peyton Martinez competed in the onsite event at Nationals. They finished 13th out of 74 teams from the United States, Germany, and Turkey.
"We are very proud of these two young men in our chapters' first Nationals Competition,” commented Chief Baker.
Dallas' 2022 National TSA Conference hosted just under 6000 attendees. The conference theme, Discover Your Journey, epitomized TSA's 44 years of intra-curricular activities, competitions, and other programs. Student members experience personal and leadership development and enhanced education and career exposure in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). More than 250,000 TSA members across the United States are learning to lead in a technical world.
For more information, contact Jennifer Hines at Jennifer.Hines@TylerISD.org.