Area-Wide Scholastic Is a Huge Success
We were pleased to sponsor the D.C. Area-Wide Scholastic Tournament, held on Saturday, April 25, at the Washington Convention Center downtown. It was nice that the Big Chair Chess Club and the D.C. Chess Association contributed to the effort.
Nearly 200 students representing more than 100 schools registered for the event. Not only were DC, Maryland, and Virginia represented, nine students from Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, made the trek to compete. Berkeley Springs High School won the trophy for the top high school. Georgetown Day School in the District of Columbia was the top middle school, and Churchill Road Elementary in McLean, Virginia, took top elementary school honors.
The playing venue was terrific. Players were close enough to others that a sense of community was created, yet there was adequate elbow room for players to be comfortable. The skittles room, similarly, was large enough to accommodate the hundreds of players, family members, and teachers between rounds while not being so cavernous as to allow isolation.
The event was divided into eight sections by grade. The youngest section, for students in kindergarten through second grade, was the largest. There were 34 children vigorously competing, with an Oyster (DC) second grader and a kindergartner from Spring Hill (VA) tying for first place. In the third grade, two Churchill Road friends won all four games. In the fourth grade, another Churchill Road student took clear first place. The fifth grade section ended with another tie, with a student from Prince George’s County’s New Hope Academy tying with a student from Fairfax County’s Kent Gardens Elementary School, each winning all four games.
A D.C. resident attending St. Albans School took clear first in the sixth grade section, a Falls Church student from Henderson Middle School won the seventh grade section, a D.C. International Middle School student won the eighth grade section, and a Montgomery Blair freshman won the high school section.
A student visiting Washington from Estonia entered the tournament and extended the event’s cultural and geographic diversity. The diversity was the point of the tournament. Chess appeals to people from every background. The Chess Center brings together people from many locations and cultures to play. We have been proud to lead a chess trip to another country, and to arrange for internet matches with players from many other countries on four continents.
We expect this to become an annual event.