The team of students representing Olivet Nazarene University at the National Cyber League (NCL) Spring Competition finished in the top 1% in the nation, ranking 36 out of 3,634 teams. Players on Team Cyberspace included Nathanael Otto, Richard Niyonzima, Jacob Morani and D’avante Farmer, and the team was led by coach, Ryan Younger, Ph.D. The competition took place April 24-26, with final results published on May 1.
The biannual NCL competition provides scenario-focused learning opportunities for young talent in the cybersecurity field. According to the organization’s website, “the mission of the NCL Competition is to prepare the next generation of cybersecurity professionals by providing high school and college students, as well as their coaches, an online, safe platform of real-world cybersecurity challenges.” In addition to gaining experience working in a team-based environment, participants in the competition earn an individualized Scouting Report, which provides data that identifies skills for professional readiness and suggests potential career tracks.
Dr. Younger, assistant professor in the Walker School of STEM, explained that the high level of performance demonstrated by Olivet’s team was not just game-day excellence, but also reflected months of intense practice.
“The result reflects the students’ hard work, sustained preparation across the semester, original in-class exercises such as password hash auctions, and targeted NCL practice, along with continued encouragement during the Team Game weekend to help maintain momentum.”
The thousands of teams that competed in this year’s online event vied to perform well across nine challenge categories including open source intelligence, cryptography, log analysis, network traffic analysis, scanning forensics, password cracking, enumeration and exploitation, and web application security. Teams from Olivet have participated in the competition for the past three years.
“One particularly notable result [for us] is that the team achieved 100% completion and 100% accuracy in Password Cracking, placing among the top 15 teams nationally with a perfect score,” Dr. Younger added about Olivet’s exceptional performance. “Beyond the final ranking, the competition shows how hands-on challenges build skills and prepare students for real-world scenarios.”
For more information about the NCL competition, visit https://nationalcyberleague.org/competition. For more information about Computer Science and Cybersecurity courses and other educational opportunities in Olivet’s School of STEM, visit Olivet.edu/Academics.
