Coolidge, Saywer win Elementary Teams Championships

   Chess players from 18 schools came to Jordan Creek Elementary in West Des Moines on February 9th for the 2007-2008 Iowa Elementary Team Championships. The event was directed by Joe Stull and Hank Anzis with help from Robert Vance and Ben Munson. New features of discounts for teams with 10 or more players, allowing non-USCF members to play for a $5 surcharge, and offering a free parent’s and friends section caused attendance to spike to 134 players, an increase of 52 from last year and the most for this event in the last 10 years.Pictures of the event can be found on chess.com's Iowa Group.

   The Elementary K-6 Championships was a close contest after 4 rounds with only 1 point separating the top 5 teams (defending champions St. Francis, Coolidge of Cedar Rapids, Sawyer and Fellows of Ames, and Weber of Iowa City), In the last round Coolidge and Sawyer picked up a point from each of their top 4 players to pass St Francis and claim the title of co-champions. Saywer was coached by Roger Gotschall and was again led by Akash Mitra’s 5 points. This was Akash’s second straight 5 for 5 result in this tournament. Mitra was assisted by Richard and Steven Dong and Nicholas Leung. Coach Lach Ross’s Coolidge team was led by DJ Pearson’s 5 points, including a last round upset of Fellow’s top-seed Kushan Tyagi. Other top scorers for Coolidge were Milton Lee, Kellen Brown, Zach Szabo, Trevor Owen, Tommy Waltmann, and Christopher Weisbein, all with 4 points or more. Both Coolidge and Saywer are K-5 schools with the 6th graders moving to Middle School. A new feature was added this year to have special prizes for the K-5 schools who do not win first prize in the K-6 section. This year’s second place K-5 team prize went to Ames Fellows team, which was led by Tyagi, Jay Amin, and Bobby Kwon’s 4 points. The third place K-6 team prizes went to 2005-06 champions Weber of Iowa City. Coach Greg Schmidt’s team was led by Adity Subramanian, Alora Kraus, and Stefan Schmidt with 4 points apiece. Fourth place went to St. Francis of Assissi, whe were led by Tyler and Travis Lein, who each had 4 points. Fifth place went to host Jordan Creek, led by Curtis Kozlowski’s 4 points.

   The K-3 Primary Championship was also won by Coolidge by 2 points over Fellows. Coolidge’s top scorers were Milton Lee, Dakota Maas, and Neal Owen’s 3 boys; Trevor, Gabriel, and Shawn. Fellow’s was led by Frank Li, Evan Welk, Jack McFarland, and Joshua Zhao. 3rd place was taken by Prairie Crest of Cedar Rapids. Jim Hodina’s squad was comprised of only 4 players, but Regan Hodina, Cheyenne Gehrke, Luke Huedepohl, Logan Serbousek scored 11.5 points to win their place on tie break over defending champion St. Francis. The St. Francis ROOKies were led by Travis Lien, Alex Perlinger, Tanner Lien, Colin Apprill, and Matthew Biegger. 5th place was won by Sawyer of Ames, whose top scorers were Steven Dong, Ananya Mitra, Irfan Dotani, and Kevin Maxwell.

   The individual section’s first place was shared by Akash Mitra, DJ Pearson, and Jiahua Zhang of Kirkwood, who all had perfect 5-0 marks. Richard Dong won 4th place, while Milton Lee took 5th. Other top scorerers were Alora Kraus, Akanksha Chilukuri, and Regan Hodina (top scoring ladies), Nicholas Leung and Jay Amin (U1000), Kellen Brown and Curtis Kozlowski (U800), Zachariah Szabo and Bobby Kwon (U600), Evan Welk and Joshua Zhao (U400), Tanner Lien and John Mahoney(U200), and Tommy Waltmann, Ashwin Kalyanakumar(Unrated). Grade prize winners were Adity Subramanian (6th), Kushan Tyagi and Christopher Weisbein(5th), Tyler Lien and Stefan Schmidt(4th), Trevor Owen (3rd), Steven Dong and Travis Lien(2nd), Ziwen Zhou, Grant Welk, Sri Charan Chilukuri, and Connar Ammar (1st), and Gabriel Owen(K).

   The 17 player unrated Parents & Friends section was dominated by parents from Weber Elementary in Iowa City. Greg Schmidt won first place with a perfect 4-0 performance. Second place went to Rick Ammar from Weber who only surrendered a draw to Yuzhou Zhang in round 2. Coolidge coach Lach Ross took third on tiebreaks from Weber’s Travis Kraus. Unrated medals went to Kraus, Zhang (who is unrated until his 1663 performance from the Cedar Rapids LeatherJackets tournament becomes official), and Bondurant’s John Hanson.