CSU Pueblo’s Cyber Wolves Successful Spring NCL Competition Fuels Competition for Fall Season

Colorado State University Pueblo’s CyberWolves team ranked among the top teams in the nation after spring 2020 in the National Cyber League (NCL) games. The CyberWolves look to compete at a high level again as the fall semester approaches.

In CSU Pueblo’s Hasan School of Business and the Center for Cyber Security Education and Research (CCSER) sponsored four teams and over 25 players to compete in the spring 2020 NCL competition season.

“Among the 25 NCL players, CSU Pueblo had seven females and seven under-represented CSU Pueblo minority students participating the spring 2020 NCL games,” said NCL coach of the CyberWolves, Roberto Mejias, Ph.D. associate professor of computer information systems and director of CCSER. “This is the highest, most diverse group of NCL cyber security players CSU Pueblo has ever had.”

The CSU Pueblo “Gold” Team placed 11^th in the nation from a field of over 925 teams, placing the CyberWolves in the top 1.2% in the national rankings. The CSU Pueblo “Bronze” Team placed 18^th of 395 teams, finishing in the top 5% of competitions and the other CSU Pueblo “Bronze” Team placed 29^th out of 395 teams in the field.

The top individual for the CyberWolves was Pueblo native and Pueblo County High School graduate, Mark Hedrick, CSU Pueblo senior studying computer information systems and cyber security.  Hedrick ranked eighth out of 5,357 competitors.

“I know that our CyberWolves team has spent a lot of time over the summer in preparation for a competitive fall season, and I look forward to putting out skills to the test when the game begin in late October,” said Hedrick.

In addition to Hedrick’s success, the CyberWolves coach Mejias placed in the top 10 of the Pewter bracket of the NCL competition against 995 NCL coach, independents and free agents in the field.

In fall 2019, CSU Pueblo’s CyberWolves were ranked as high as fifth in the nation according to the NCL Cyber Skyline Power Rankings. Schools are ranked based on their top team performance, their top student’s individual performance and the aggregate individual performance of their students.

Each year over 10,000 students from more than 300 colleges and universities across the nation participate in the NCL cyber security competitions. These ranking represent the ability of students from the schools to perform real-world cyber security tasks on the NCL Cyber Skyline platform.  Students identify hackers from forensic data, penetration test and audit vulnerable websites, recover from ransomware attacks and more.