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Calchess Grade Level State Championship 2014

Allyson Lu proudly conquers her opponent while wearing a blue MSJE team shirt.
Allyson Wong proudly conquers her opponent while wearing a blue MSJE team shirt.

On January 11-12, several hundred of the most talented young chess players in Norther California attended the Calchess Grade Level State Championship at the SFO Airport Hyatt Regency. Students from the Torres Chess and Music Academy‘s school program at Mission San Jose Elementary School once again dominated every grade they fielded a team in. The only disappointment for head coach Joe Lonsadale was the fact that MSJE sixth graders had another commitment which made it impossible for Mission San Jose Elementary School to have a clean sweep of all the elementary grade levels. Still, it’s hard to be too disappointed when your team wins first place in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade, and fifth grade! Mission San Jose Elementary School also had  had individual first places in grade 5 (David Pan), grade 2 (Kevin Pan), and grade 1 (Arnav Lingannagari.) All the credit that does not go to the players themselves must be given to head coach Joe Lonsdale, who despite being obviously under the weather, analyzed his kids games for two straight days.

(Editors note: Because there was not a Calchess Grade Level State Championship tournament held during the 2013 calendar year, the previous event was the 2012 Calchess Grade Level State Championship detailed here.)

Published by chessmusings

Chris Torres is a nationally renowned scholastic chess coach working in the San Francisco Bay Area. His classes have attracted players of strengths ranging from rank beginners to world champions. A chess professional since 1998, Chris is widely recognized as one of the main driving forces behind the explosion in popularity and sudden rise in quality of scholastic chess in California. Chris Torres served as the President of the Torres Chess and Music Academy from 2005-2020 and currently is recognized as a correspondence chess master with the United States Chess Federation. Since 1998 Chris Torres has taught 6 individual national champions as well as led multiple school teams to win national championship titles. In addition, Chris Torres has directed and taught at 10 different schools which have been California State Champions at chess. In 2011 and 2012, several former and current students of Chris Torres have been selected to represent the United States at the World Youth Chess Championships. Mr. Torres’ hobbies include playing classical guitar and getting his students to appear on the national top 100 chess rating lists.

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