The tournament at Bellaire High School last
weekend was the kick-off meet for the 2004 - 2005 Scholastic Chess
season. For those new to competitive chess, our T. H. Rogers team
competes as 2 separate schools, Elementary and Middle. While the children
compete for individual awards within their respective divisions, overall
team trophies are awarded to the top 3 Elementary, Middle and High Schools
at the meet. I was delighted with our turnout. We had 16 elementary
students and 9 middle school students participating. That breadth and
depth really helped us.
I'm happy to report that our Elementary Team took top honors
clinching the 1st place team trophy by a 5 point margin, a very
strong win. That win was fueled by the clean sweep of the Primary JV
(i.e. Kindergarten - 3rd grade junior varsity level) division with the
standings as follows:
- Anderson Isdale - 2nd grade - with a perfect 5.0 score
- Eleanor Gilbert - 2nd grade
- Sarah Lew - 3rd grade
- Kevin Murphy - 2nd grade
Moving up a division, there was a 4 way tie for 1st place including our
own:
- Tommy Williamson - 3rd grade
- Shantan Cheemerla - 5th grade
Also of note was 2nd grader Kevin Wang's 2nd place finish in one of the
upper divisions (which included kids up through 12th grade).
Our Middle School Team earned the 2nd place team trophy.
7th grader Steven Pan was our point leader for the day. Because our team
did quite well at the State Scholastic last spring, all of the returning
team members are playing at the varsity level. These are very tough
divisions now. While the consolidation of our players into the top levels
will make earning the top trophy in local meets much harder, it is a good
thing looking ahead to the regional, state and national meets coming up in
the Spring. Team trophies are awarded in local meets on the performance
of both Varsity and JV players combined, while the state and national
titles are awarded based on varsity play alone. There are separate team
trophies given at the state and national meets at the JV levels.
Many thanks to Coach David John, his father Coach George John, and to
Coach Evan Michaelides for for their many hours of game analysis. The
kids keep them really busy, and their insights were extremely helpful.
Looking ahead to our next meet, October 9th, here at T. H. Rogers, we hope
to field an even larger team. Several of our Kindergartners and First
Graders will be joining us for their first meets, as well as some older
players who are just starting tournament competition. Printable
registration forms can be downloaded from:
http://liptrap.topcities.com/hcao04.htm. Online registration is
available at:
http://liptrap.topcities.com/enter.htm. It is never to soon to start
sending them in.
Martha |