National Youth Action Chess Championship Concludes!
By Joan DuBois   
November 30, 2009
Official Press Release
November 30, 2009
Contact: [email protected]




(Crossville, TN) A total of 497 player names appeared on the wall charts for U. S. Chess Federation's (USCF) 2009 National Youth Action in Oakbrook, Illinois.  Their great chess weekend started on November 20 and lasted through November 22.  Sunday’s awards ceremony had Canterbury, Fort Wayne In (Daniel Gater, Daniel Ryker, David Witwer, and Emily Tallo) take home the first place team trophy in the K-12 section.  The K-9 top team honors went to CCSCSL, St. Louis, MO (Kevin Cao, Jialin Ding, Isaiah Gadson, and William Tong) while the K-6 team glory was claimed by District 103, Lincolnshire, IL (James Wei, Alex Bian, Allen Guo, and Conrad Oberhaus).  The highest scoring K-3 team was Chess Without Borders (Matthew Stevens, Akhil Kalghatgi, Ranad Tripuraneni, and Jonathan Tan) and they traveled just a few short miles from Barrington, IL to pick up their first place tribute. 

Individual first place trophies for excellence were taken home by the 8-1 scoring K-12 champion Praveen Sanjay (GA) whose tiebreaks put him ahead of 8-1 scoring Michael Auger (IL). The K-9 top finisher with a score of 7.5-1.5 was Kevin Cao (MO) who tied with Joshua Colas (NY) and Jialin Ding (MO).  Kevin was awarded the trophy on tiebreaks.  The first place K-6 individual honors went to the 8 points accumulated by Jonathan Zhou (IN).  Mathew Stevens (IL) went 8.5-.5 in the K-3 section to capture sole first place honors. 

The Bughouse event on Friday night proved fruitful to the team of Eric Rosen and Michael Auger whose 10 points topped the charts.

In the Saturday Blitz tournament the K-12 section ended with Joshua Colas (NY) alone in first place with 8 points while the team glory went to the Chess Club of Minnesota (Zachary Adams, Andrew Tang, Mathew Dahl, and Kevin Bu).  The K-6 Blitz section was topped by Bryce Mc Clanahan (IL) scoring 9.5 points while the team honors went to CCSCSL, St. Louis , MO (Stephen Zhang, Margaret Hua, Michael Yin, and Nathan Phan).

Glenn Panner and Tim Just organized the event while Wayne Clark was the chief TD.  The TD staff was filled out by Gary Janssen, Jeff Wiewel, Mike Zacate, Orn Backstrom, Betsy Dynako, Walter Brown, James Aman, Maret Thorpe, Allen Priest, Mike Hoffpauir, and Tom Priest.

No tournament is complete without its helpers at chess control:  Andrea Panner, Renee Brands, Elizabeth Vilaflor, and Alice Holt. 

For a complete list of finishers please visit us at http://www.chessweekend.com/nya/home.html. Official USCF crosstable can be found at: http://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?200911223041

The United States Chess Federation (USCF),
founded in 1939, serves as the governing body for chess in the United States and is now headquartered in Crossville, Tennessee. USCF is devoted to extending the role of chess in American society. It promotes the study and knowledge of the game of chess, for its own sake as an art and enjoyment, and as a means for the improvement of society. The USCF is a not-for-profit membership organization with over 80,000 members. For additional information on the USCF see: www.uschess.org.