Coach Joe’ Report on the 2018 Calchess Scholastic State Championships (Photography by Hui Wang):
The 2018 Northern California Scholastic Chess Championships were held the weekend of April 7th & 8th at the Santa Clara convention center. Over 1200 students and more the 50 schools competed in these championships. Mission San Jose Elementary school (MSJE) of Fremont was the big winner in the Elementary School Division. The MSJE Chess Team won two of the three major elementary school sections (K-3 & K-6) and Kevin Pan won the overall individual elementary school championship.
The top elementary school section at these championships is the K-6 Championship Division. Kevin Pan scored five wins in six rounds and took the first-place trophy. Other members of the MSJE team were Stephen He (4/6), Nicholas Jiang (4/6), Aidan Chen (3.5/6), and Nivedha Maniv (3/6). In the fourth round Aidan Chen won a critical game versus Weibel. This was the eighth straight year that MSJE has taken home the first place trophy in K-6.
The K-5 Championship section is the second highest elementary school section at the State Scholastic Chess Championships. This section was created in 2007 to give elementary schools without a grade 6 a fair chance to win a championship section. MSJE has won this section every year since it was created. Both MSJE and Weibel entered strong teams in the K5 Championship section. The MSJE team was led by Aghilan Nachiappan (5/6 2nd place) and Allyson Wong (4.5/6 8th place). The Weibel team scored 17 points and beat the MSJE team (16.5) by the smallest possible margin. Other top scorers on the MSJE K-5 team were Viabhav Wudaru (3.5/6 #19), Siddharth Arulta (3.5/6 #21) Arnav Lingannagari (3.5/6 #24), and Ayaan Kassamali (3.5/6 #27). Jolene Liu, Saidivy Tunguturu, Aditya Sujay, Vividh Goenka, Mihit Puvvula, and Arna Gupta also competed for our K-5 team.
The K-3 Championship section is often called the primary school championship. MSJE won the first-place team trophy in this section every year since 2008. In 2018 MSJE once again took home the first-place trophy in K-3 Championship. Our K-3 team was led by first grader Lucas Jiang (4.5/6 #4), third grader Kayden jiang (4/6 #9) Jason Liu (3.5/6 #14) and Aditya Arulta (3.5/6 #19). First graders Artham Pawar and Arnam Pawar also competed for our championship K-3 team.
MSJE also did very well in the other sections. Isha Vanungare, Sarvesh Maniv, and Aditya Vanungare competed in the Kindergarten section and took home the third-place team trophy. Neil Kumar, Prisha Agarwal, Pranav Rajit, Ranga Ramanujam, Edward Zeng, Dhritee Desia, Ashwin Jagan, Ruthvik Arumalla, SHreeya Hule, Shrihan Bolla, Kerrthana Gudi, and Aaditya Bisht competed in the K-3 beginner section. Allen Yang, Swagatha Selvam, Pratyush Hule, Ashwin Marimuthu, Zahaan Kassamali, Avkash Panwar, and Meghana Satish competed in the K-3 JV section. Ardash Swamy, Nityasri Kolta, Maurya Arumalla and Pratyush Hule competed in the K-6 JV section.
Congratulations to the Chess team for a great showing at the State championships.
Chess Coaches: Joe Lonsdale, Terry & Cathy Liu, Meiyaps Sathappan, Nachi Aghilan, and Chris Torres