Six students from The Woodlands High School won the national CyberPatriot competition, the Air Force Association's biggest high school cybersecurity contest. The team, competing as "WoodlandsCyber," beat more than 5,000 other teams at the finals in Baltimore.

The competition has teams find and fix cybersecurity holes in simulated networks while keeping systems running, basically defending a fake company against live cyberattacks. The Woodlands team posted the highest score in the competition's 17-year history.

Their faculty advisor said it came down to hundreds of hours of practice after school and mentoring from cybersecurity professionals at Houston-area companies. Two of the six team members already have scholarship offers from university cybersecurity programs.

Conroe ISD Superintendent Curtis Null put out a statement congratulating them. The board of trustees plans to recognize the team at its next meeting, and a community event is in the works.