RBR Grad Business Leaders Triumph

Recent Red Bank Regional High School (RBR) graduates have been recognized nationally for their business acumen.

Ryan McVeety, of Little Silver, and Michael Terpak, Union Beach, both 2013 graduates, recently returned from Anaheim, CA, finishing first and eighth, respectively, in the Future Business Leaders Association’s national competition.

The two RBR Academy of Information Technology (AOIT) students were also part of the RBR CyberTech team that won the Air Force Association’s CyberPatriot State Championship with fellow students Richard Connors, Neptune City, Jeremy Comeo, Union Beach, Austin Ostrander, Millstone Township, and Alec Jasanovsky, Neptune City. 

This added to several other victories during the school year, including top trophies in the NYU-Poly CSAW Forensics national competition and first and fourth place finishes in the first NJ Governor’s Cyber Challenge.

Although RBR’s IT students have become accustomed to bringing home many trophies for their IT and cyber security prowess, it was hardly imaginable this year could be such a success due to its very rocky start.

“In early October 2012, the team was gearing up for round one of the CyberPatriot cyber defense competition, one of the most challenging and prestigious cyber events of the year," their teacher, Mandy Galante, explained.  "The team was talented, motivated and had been practicing hard to prepare.  round one should have been a 'doable' challenge for this group, maybe not a layup, but nothing to stress out over either."

But Team RBR not only stressed out during round one, it hit a wall. The reason: Hurricane Sandy.

The huge storm walloped New Jersey on October 29th, a mere 18 days before Round 1. The communities that make up RBR were smack in her path. No power for 13 straight days, no heat and, for many students in our district, no home.

Everyone came through the storm safely but the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy was grueling. Two of the team members live in Union Beach and were dealing with the fact that their town was almost wiped off the map. School was closed for two straight weeks so instead of practicing security hardening, we were tearing water soaked debris out of our neighbor’s homes.

The “Jersey Strong” school community rallied to recover ... Team RBR was confident that Sandy was just a speed bump that wouldn’t really impact their competitive ability.