There’s an old saying that “To catch a thief, you have to think like one.” For five intense days, two teams of Niwot High School (NHS) girls rewired their thought processes to compete in a computer security challenge to thwart cybercrime.
Stepping into the virtual shoes of hackers, the teams out-performed their competitors admirably. The Coding Cougars team, made up of Julia Curd (sophomore), Davita Bird (sophomore), Michelle Tran (senior) and Aileen Ma (senior) finished first in the state and ninth in the nation. Team Niwot, comprised of Valorie Myhre (sophomore), Subi Bhatt (freshman), Kay Altshuler (sophomore) and Esther Xu (sophomore) finished seventh in the state.There were 93 teams competing from Colorado.