Iowa City’s Northwest wins Junior High Team Championship

  Iowa City’s Northwest Junior High School’s ‘A’ team won the 2008 Iowa Junior High School Team Championship by sweeping all 4 matches in the tournament held at Cedar Rapids’ Prairie High on March 29th. Making maximum use of the provision allowing schools to use students from feeder schools, 4 of Coach Greg Schmidt’s team attend Weber Elementary and top board Jiahua Zhang attends Kirkwood Elementary. 4th Grade champ Zhang scored a perfect 4 out of 4 and had ample support from Aditya Subramanian (3.5) on board 3, Lukas Schmidt (3.0) on board 5, and Jaye Jackson, and Alora Kraus (3.0) on boards 2 and 4. Second and Third places were shared by Roger Gotschall’s Ames Middle School A and B teams with the ‘A’ team taking second on tiebreak. The ‘A’ team was led by Conor Burke-Smith 4 points and Michael Vaclav II’s 3.5 points, with Chris Jenks and Kade Cain chipping in with 3 and 2.5 points , respectively. The ‘B’ team was paced by Tenson Cai with 4 points, Kenson Cai and Paul Lebberstedt with 3 points and Daniel Vigil with 2.5 points. Northwest’s Junior High ‘B’ team was led Iowa Junior High co-champion Daniel Johnson’s 3 points and Patrick Tierney’s 2.5 points. Prairie Middle School was led by top board Tyler Hodina’s 2 points. Harding Middle School from Cedar Rapids was the only new team to compete and won the awards as the best new team. The tournament was directed by Jim Hodina with Hank Anzis doing the pairings. Pictures of the event can be found here

   Board prizes for top scores were won by Jiahua Zhang, Jaye Jackson, Kade Cain, Daniel Vigil, Patrick Tierney, Adity Subramanian, Michael Vaclav II, Conor Burke-Smith, and Tenson Cai.

  Special thanks to Victor Kalil, Stefan Schmidt, and Soren Schmidt (and their parents) for their willingness to forego a chance to win prizes at the adjoining Youth Trophy tournament so the Northwest ‘B’ team could compete and allow us to have an even number of teams.