Iowa City West HS and Ames MS Win State Scholastic Teams

Prairie High School hosted the 2009 Iowa High School and Middle School Team Championships. The March 7 event saw six 5-player teams compete in the Middle School Section for four rounds. When the Prairie Middle School (742) and Carson Family Home School (542) tied in the first round, an earlier show down of the top two rated teams was set: Northwest Junior High School of Iowa City (1303) pitted against underdog Ames Middle School Team A (1112). The top two players in the field faced off on board one with Kushan Tyagi (1700) of Ames winning witth the white pieces over Northwest Junior High’s Venkat Iyer (1606). Ames’ Cai brothers, Kenson and Tenson, filled boards 2 and 3 taking a draw and win against Northwest’s Jihua Zhang and Daniel Johnson, respectively. While Northwest picked up a point on board 4 with Adity Subramanian defeating Conor Burke-Smith, it wasn’t enough as Akash Mitra grabbed a full point from Jaye Jackson giving Ames a 3.5 to 1.5 victory. Both teams finished out the tournament winning rounds 3 and 4 giving the State Championship to Ames Middle School and second place honors to Northwest Junior High of Iowa City. There was plenty of tension left in the tournament to determine the third place trophy. Prairie Middle School defeated Cedar Rapids Taft in round three giving the team 1.5 points and sole third place heading into round 4. However, with only six teams and four rounds, pairings get weird at the end and so Prairie had to play Ames Middle School (Team A). This left Ames Middle School Team B (675) paired against Carson Family Middle School. For those who are familiar with the Carson family, you will know that they have four students, meaning that they played with Board 5 empty the entire tournament. So when Iowa Girls State Champion, Bethany Carson, was upset by Ames’s Brett Weiss, it was left to siblings Charity, Daniel, and Sarah Faith to sweep with wins and win the match. They did just that, propelling them into a tie with Prairie Middle School at 1.5. Prairie did claim the third place trophy on tie-breaks over the Carson Family Homeschool. Taft finished time with Ames Team B with the Taft taking the 5th place trophy on tie-breaks. The High School Team Event was contested by two teams this year. Iowa City West High School and Cedar Rapids Jefferson High School arrived expecting some competition from the rest of the state and were surprised not to see more of the usual faces from central Iowa. So, with just the two teams, it was decided to play a two game match. Both teams brought first time tournament goers to fill their rosters. Dan Brashaw, Iowa’s top rated scholastic player sat on board 1 for West. Jefferson’s Jacob Ulrich played well but it was Brashaw picking up wins in both rounds. Chester Flaum and Jordan Vozinelik split a pair. Tan Nguyen grabbed a win and a draw for Jefferson but then Kevin Huang and Young Seol picked up two wins each on boards 4 and 5 to give West a 2-0 match score and the title of Iowa High School Team Chess Champions. For tournament cross tables and pictures, visit http://sites.google.com/sites/chessiniowa