Young chess players learn during Queen’s Quest

MADISON – Many young chess players progressed to their first rated chess tournament during the 2017 Queen’s Quest.

Mill Creek Elementary hosted this year’s tournament, which is in its third consecutive year. “Elementary students competed in four sections: K-6 Championship, 4th-6th Under 500, K-3 Championship and K-3 Under 300,” Ranae Bartlett said. Bartlett is Executive Director of Madison City Chess League.

In K-6 Championship Section, individual winners were Xavier Bruni, first; Geon Park, second; Karsten Wallace, third; Pranaav Satheesh, fourth; Rishi Sethuraj, fifth; Steven Pan, sixth; Oviya Gowder, seventh; Aasim Musani, eighth; Henry Holland, ninth; and Arnav Maskey, tenth.

Rainbow Elementary School ranked first in team awards with 16.5 points. Rounding out the top five were Madison Elementary School, second place, 11 points; Horizon Elementary School, third place, 10 points; and Mill Creek, fourth, 8.5 points. In a tie for fifth place, Hampton Cove and Columbia elementary schools earned 7.5 points.

For the Under 500 (4th-6th Grade) Section, students earning individual awards for the top ten places were Mick Tyrrell, Shlok Chatterjee, May Watson, Arjun Gaikwad, Kyle Saurman, Alex Fedoseyev, Austin Holden, Nathan Schamban, Sahishnu Saha and, in a tie for tenth, Aiden Kohler, Christine Wang and Songla Lee.

In this section’s team awards, Rainbow again ranked first with 13 points. The top five, in order, included Madison elementary, 11.5 points; West Madison, 9 points; Blossomwood Elementary School, 9 points; and Horizon, 8 points.

In the K-3 Championship Section, Landon Drummond was first-place winner in individual awards. In second through ninth places, respectively, in individual honors were Aadi Saxena, Andrew Nguyen, Laya Gowder, Hatch Lombardy, Noah Hsu, Joseph Park, Praneel Avula and Parker Demirjian.

Rainbow was top place also for this section with 13 points. Heritage Elementary School scored 8 points to earn second place. Each with 2 points, Columbia and Mill Creek placed third and fourth, respectively.

“Our largest section of the tournament was the newly created K-3 Under 300 section with 43 students competing,” Bartlett said.

Individual award winners were Benjamin Benedict, Sarah Rydbom, Asher Kovacs, Louis Johnson, Blaise Bruni, Rayyan Killedar, Rainer Schram, Viraat Veeravalli, Tyce Crosswy, Joyner Livingston, Samsara Rajbhandari, Braden Rimes, Emma Kuang, Trenton Holcombe, Nikhita Katragadda, Joshua Nguyen, Saqib Baig and Samuel Nixon.

Again, Rainbow’s team aced first place with 15.5 points, followed by Horizon, 15 points; Madison elementary, 11.5 points; Heritage, 10.5 points; and Mill Creek, 10.5 points.

For more information, visit madisonchess.org.