When I arrived at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania to start my Master’s, I expected to spend most of my time heads-down in coursework. What I didn’t expect was that one of the most rewarding things I’d do there had nothing to do with a grade. It was building a community.
This is the story of Gannon Hacks, the cybersecurity and CTF club I founded on campus, and how our very first year ended with us being named Best New Club.
Why start a club?
I’ve been hooked on Capture The Flag competitions since 2017, back in my RPCA CTF Club days in Thailand. CTF is how I learned the most. Not from slides, but from being stuck on a challenge at 2 a.m. and refusing to give up until it cracked.
When I got to Gannon, I noticed a lot of students were curious about security but didn’t really have a place to start. Some wanted to try hacking challenges, some were preparing for certs, and some just wanted to find other people who geeked out over the same things. What was missing was a room where you could put them all together.
So instead of waiting for one to exist, I decided to start it.
What Gannon Hacks is about
The idea was simple, and it became our tagline:
Learn. Compete. Build. Break things ethically.
Gannon Hacks is a community of hackers, defenders, and problem solvers, and it’s for everyone, from complete beginners to experienced researchers. What we focus on:
- Weekly training. Every Wednesday we run hands-on sessions on the fundamentals that actually matter: Linux, cryptography, web exploitation, and the blue-team side too.
- CTF competitions. This is the heart of the club. We play together, we learn from each other’s solves, and we compete as a team.
- Going beyond campus. Research, conferences, and outreach, so members get experience a syllabus can’t cover.
The goal was never to build a club for people who are already good. It was to build the on-ramp I wish I’d had: a low-pressure place to get your hands dirty and learn by doing.
Competing at BSidesROC 2026
One of the proudest moments of the year was taking a team to the BSidesROC 2026 Capture The Flag competition in Rochester. Against 20+ teams, we held first place for much of the six-hour event before a late scoring shift pushed us to a final 4th place.
That result didn’t come from cramming. It came from showing up to those Wednesday training sessions, week after week. Standing in that room watching the scoreboard move because of challenges we solved together was exactly the feeling I started the club for.
On the road
The club also got out into the wider security community. Members represented Gannon Hacks at OWASP AppSec in Boston, where we connected with professionals across the public and private sectors and picked up an invitation to the Austin, Texas edition. We also made it to the HIMSS Virginia Chapter Cybersecurity & AI Summit in Charlottesville, sitting in on sessions covering adversarial AI, AI governance, and a healthcare ransomware tabletop.
Closer to home, we opened our doors to local high school students for a hands-on introduction to the field, passing on the same learn-by-doing approach that defines our own sessions.
Being named Best New Club
At this year’s Gannon Awards Ceremony, Gannon Hacks was named Best New Student Organization, the Best New Club. 🏆
To me, that award isn’t about a single competition or a single trophy. It’s recognition of all of it at once: the weekly training, the research, the competition results, and members who were willing to travel for conferences on their own time. It belongs to everyone who showed up to a Wednesday session, ran a workshop, or represented the club on the road.
What’s next
A club is never really “finished.” It’s a living thing that each new group of members reshapes. My hope is that Gannon Hacks outlasts any one person, including me, and keeps being the place where the next curious student finds their footing in security.
Best New Club is a great start. Here’s to building on it: more research, more competitions, more conferences.
If you’re at Gannon and you’ve ever wondered whether this stuff is for you, it is. Come break things with us (ethically). 😉
Check us out at gannonhacks.club.