Mayor’s Cup

On the 13th of March at 8:50 AM, students from Oak Hills High School, all ranging in age and skill level, join a voice channel on the popular VoIP application “Discord” to await further instruction. Synchronously, at 8:40 AM Oak Hills’ cohort teams met at the school site while socially distanced to prepare for the harrowing experience awaiting them. Months after Cyber Patriot, this would be the Oak Hills High School 3ncrpyt3d Club’s first ‘Red Team’ competition of the year. After preparing themselves in a multitude of ways ranging from online classes to the Mayor’s Cup’s own practice gymnasium, the members were ready. They were to compete against college, high school, and middle school students across the Inland Empire and Desert in topics like Cryptography, Linux command-line skills, and the accursed Log Analysis. The competition was set out to be great.

The prize at hand was a chalice-shaped trophy that would be presented to the winning team’s city mayor in recognition of their technological prowess. After an incredible 4 hour competition, the OHHS 3ncrypt3d club finalized their scores and awaited the results while recovering with home-prepared tamales. Although we did not place in the top three of high schools, we can proudly say that we beat out the top colleges only barely falling behind Riverside City College’s students. After so much preparation, the California Mayor’s Cup was a great opportunity to test the waters and push ourselves to the limit.