CrowdStrike’s Rogers Prevails In Overtime To Claim Solutions 16 Berth: Channel Madness

The final spot in Round 2 of the 2026 CRN Channel Madness Tournament goes to CrowdStrike’s Michael Rogers, who dug deep to best Schneider Electric’s Gordon Lord in overtime voting.

A historic Round 1 of CRN Channel Madness is finally in the books after CrowdStrike’s Michael Rogers prevailed as the winner in the tournament’s first overtime matchup.

As the polls closed Wednesday afternoon, Rogers was tied with Schneider Electric’s Gordon Lord, forcing a three-hour overtime round to determine the winner, with a spot in the Solutions 16 on the line.

Rogers had a lot of gas left in the take and emerged as the winner with 62 percent of the vote to Lord’s 38 percent.

That performance sends Rogers hurtling into Round 2, where he will face off against OpenText’s Mike DePalma, a quarterfinalist in last year’s event.

Here’s a look at the full results:

Transformation

Christine McElduff, Cloudflare, 74 percent vs. Nick Tidd, Zoom Communications, 27 percent

Scott Lannum, HP Inc., 54 percent vs. Michelle Welch, WatchGuard, 46 percent

Bob Skelley, Arctic Wolf, 55 percent vs. Nicole Dezen, Microsoft, 45 percent

Tara Fine, Broadcom, 41 percent vs. Jennifer Heard, Red Hat, 59 percent

Acceleration

Michael DePalma, OpenText, 63 percent vs. Craig Weinstein, Nvidia, 37 percent

Gordon Lord, Schneider Electric, 38 percent vs. Michael Rogers, CrowdStrike, 62 percent

Dan Tomaszewski, Kaseya, 53 percent vs. Tim Coogan, Cisco Systems, 47 percent

Lisa Citron, F5, 70 percent vs. Jeremiah Jenson, HPE, 30 percent

Innovation

Christian Goffi, Nutanix, 59 percent vs. Michael Park, ServiceNow, 41 percent

Gordon Mackintosh, Equinix, 31 percent vs. Denise Millard, Dell Technologies, 69 percent

Larissa Crandall, 1Password, 54 percent vs. Craig Patterson, Exabeam, 46 percent

Wade McFarland, Lenovo, 58 percent vs. Steve Loeb, Eaton, 42 percent

Evolution

Kevin Rooney, Veeam Software, 57 percent vs. Kendra Krause, ThreatDown, 43 percent

Michelle Ragusa-McBain, Corero, 48 percent vs. Landon Scott, Fortinet, 52 percent

Scott Barlow, Sophos, 78 percent vs. Hope Galley, Everpure, 22 percent

Brian Lanigan, SentinelOne, 56 percent vs. David Guzzi, Intel, 44 percent

That brings us to our Solutions 16 Matchups, which kick off tomorrow:

Transformation

Christine McElduff, Cloudflare vs. Scott Lannum, HP Inc.

Bob Skelley, Arctic Wolf vs. Jennifer Heard, Red Hat

Acceleration

Michael DePalma, OpenText vs. Michael Rogers, CrowdStrike

Dan Tomaszewski, Kaseya vs. Lisa Citron, F5

Innovation

Christian Goffi, Nutanix vs. Denise Millard, Dell Technologies

Larissa Crandall, 1Password vs. Wade McFarland, Lenovo

Evolution

Kevin Rooney, Veeam Software vs. Landon Scott, Fortinet

Scott Barlow, Sophos vs. Brian Lanigan, SentinelOne

Voting in Round 2 opens at 10 AM ET on Thursday, March 19. Cast your votes at CRN.com/madness to choose your chief!