Madison chess players ace state tourney
Teams from Rainbow Elementary School won numerous awards at the 2017 State Scholastic Chess Championship. CONTRIBUTED
MADISON – Chess teams from Madison dominated the 2017 State Scholastic Chess Championship, hosted by Bob Jones High School on March 11-12.
“It was a record-setting event for Madison chess students and their coaches,” Ranae Bartlett said. Bartlett is a coach for Rainbow Elementary School’s teams and is Executive Director of Madison City Chess League. “Madison welcomed the state’s top chess students to compete for individual and team awards.”
“Once again, Madison chess teams demonstrated how hard work pays off as they swept all school team awards in both Primary and Elementary sections. Madison teams retained their Junior High School championship and even added Junior High and Open K-12 Club team championships on behalf of Madison City Chess League,” Bartlett said.
In the Primary section, Alabama Chess Federation awards three team trophies. For the second consecutive year, Rainbow boasted the top two Primary teams.
Rainbow Red, first-place team with 4 team points, included Ethan Van, Caroline Wang, Karsten Wallace and Xavier Bruni. The second-place team was Rainbow Blue with 2.5 points with Artem Starenki, Landon Drummond, Arnav Maskey and Andrew Nguyen.
In third place, Horizon Elementary School scored with 2.5 points with Cole Spanier, Nirvana Rajbhandari and Mark Allison.
“Dominance of the Madison Primary teams can be seen in who followed the award winners,” Bartlett said. “Tied for 4th-7th places with two team points were Mill Creek Elementary School, Rainbow Yellow team, Columbia Elementary School Ruby team and West Madison Elementary School.”
Members of these Madison teams also participate in MCCL All Star Chess program.
In Elementary (K-6) division, Rainbow Gold Team of Victor Lundy, Constance Wang, Geon Park and Zachary Calinsky placed first, also with a perfect score. Heritage Elementary School’s team earned second place. Taking third-place honors was Columbia Elementary School’s Diamond team.
Rainbow Silver team of Luke Chynoweth, Ryan Shurtz and Jonathan Yang played well — with only three players. Next in ranking was Rainbow Diamond, an all-girl team with Rachael Ehrman, Mable Danh, Catrina Holschen and Corinne Wilhelm.
In individual competition, the federation only awards the top 5 trophies in Primary and Elementary. With a perfect score of 5 points, Xavier Bruni won first place and was declared Primary Champion, the second Rainbow student to earn that distinction; Geon Park accomplished this status in 2016.
For 3rd place, an 11-way tie resulted with students all scoring 4 points. After applying tie-break rules, Ethan Van won 4th place, and Landon Drummond won 5th place. Also tied were Marek Fries Andrew Nguyen, Karsten Wallace, Artem Starenki and Caroline Wang.
In Elementary (K-6) Championship, Rainbow achieved a first when Constance Wang was declared the Co-Champion of Elementary achieving 4.5 out of 5 points. Also receiving awards were Geon Park, 3rd, and Victor Lundy, 5th. Catrina Holschen won 1st place in 4th-6th Under 600; Rachael Ehrman won 2nd place in K-12 Under 1000.
For more information, visit madisonchess.com/blog.
