Madison earns top awards at Rookie Rally chess tourney
Bob Jones High School won as first-place team in the K-12 Open Section of Rookie Rally. Individual award winners were William Spanier, from left, first; Tyler Wessling, second; Preston Smith, third; Erin Kueck, fourth; and Joseph Quan, fifth. CONTRIBUTED
MADISON – Hosted by Blossomwood Elementary School in Huntsville, the 2017 Rookie Rally Scholastic Chess Tournament drew 184 students who competed in five different sections.
Bethany Pauli, Blossomwood’s chess team sponsor and enrichment teacher, coordinated the event on Jan. 28. Bill Nash will serve as chief tournament director and works as Vice President of Alabama Chess Federation Scholastic.
“The Primary (K-3) section was once again the largest section with 67 students competing from across North Alabama,” Ranae Bartlett said. Bartlett is Executive Director of Madison City Chess League. Josh McClellan was floor TD.
The Primary (K-3) section was the largest section. Isabelle Park from Columbia Elementary School and Arnav Maskey from Rainbow Elementary School qualified for Madison’s 2017 City Chess Championship.
Individual trophy winners in the Top Ten, in order, were Karsten Wallace, Xavier Bruni, Isabelle Park, Ethan Van, Arnav Maskey, Artem Starenki, Caroline Wang, Cole Spanier, Abhinav Chakrad and Holland Lang. Aadi Saxena, Patrick Dowd and Cameron Edwards tied for eleventh place.
Teams earning trophies were Rainbow Elementary School, first place; Horizon Elementary School, second; Hampton Cove Elementary School, third; Mill Creek Elementary School, fourth; and Columbia, fifth. Primary teams from Heritage and West Madison elementary schools accumulated 11 points each and narrowly missed a team trophy.
In the Elementary (K-6) Section, Luke Chynoweth from Rainbow and Aasim Musani from Madison Elementary School qualified for the City Chess Championship.
Individual winners from Madison in the Elementary (K-6) Section earned the Top Ten places: (in order from first) Victor Lundy, Shreya Sunil, Ethan Xu, Constance Wang, Luke Chynoweth, Aasim Musani, Christopher Kang, Oviya Gowder, Rishi Sethuraj and Christopher Foote. Also, Ryan Shurtz, Pranaav Satheesh and Geon Park tied for eleventh-place medals.
Winners of team trophies were Rainbow, first; Columbia, second; Heritage, third; Mill Creek, fourth; and Randolph School, fifth.
Receiving individual trophies in the Junior High (K-9) section were Will Fox, first; Jenson Wilhelm, second; Hayden Billmann, third; Aubteen Pour-Biazar, fourth; and Ben Kosan, fifth. Tied for fifth-place medals were Edward Calinsky, Will Cox, Carson Boland, Sohan Mynampally and Luke Saurman.
“Discovery and Liberty middle schools battled it out all day for first and second place, with Discovery just edging out Liberty by one-half point,” Bartlett said. “Covenant Christian Academy finished in third place.”
Bob Jones High School won as first-place team in the K-12 Open Section. Grace Billmann qualified for the City Chess Championship. Covenant Christian won second place. Winning the top five individual awards were William Spanier, Tyler Wessling, Preston Smith, Erin Kueck and Joseph Quan.
