Stephens sweeps Youth Trophy Tournament

   Winterset’s Kristian Stephens of the Madison Area Home School Chess Club won the 42 player Cedar Rapids Youth Trophy Tournament held March 29th at Prairie High School with a perfect 5-0 score. Second Place though 5th place were taken by members of Cedar Rapids Coolidge Elementary ‘s K-3 and K-6 team champions. Trevor Owen was the only other undefeated player besides Stephens but surrendered a 3rd round draw to Graham Young and finished second with 4.5 points. 3rd thru 5th were shared by Zachariah Szabo, Kellen Brown, and Tommy Waltmann, all 3 suffering their only loss at the hands of Stephens.

   Class prizes were won by Chris Weisbein and Graham Young (U1200), Milton Lee and Alex Moen(U1000), Griffin Young and Emma Stephens(U800), Kenneth Slagell and Danielle Roth(U600), Logan Serbousek and Anshuman Dash(U400), Nam-Jae Rhee, Gokul Thangkavel, Chris Serbousek(U200). Awards for top unrated players went to Thomas Panther, Ben Rittland, and David Pettepier, with prizes for the top scoring ladies going to Cheyenne Gehrke, Courtney Vondracek, and Kennedy Dighton. The tournament was directed by outgoing IASCA Scholastic Director Hank Anzis who was presented with a banner of appreciation at the awards ceremony. Pictures of the event can be found here

   The 6 player parent section was won by Greg Schmidt and Yuzhou Zhang with 2 wins apiece. Greg has yet to lose or tie a game in a parent’s tournament. The top ladies prize went to Kathryn Chaloner.