2019-2020 Chess Team Highlights and Online Chess

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Chess Coach and Science Department Chair Howard Granok shares highlights from the 2019-2020 Chess Team season below:

The chess team had a successful, if shortened, season. We hosted our annual elementary school tournament in October and our trivia night in November. Next year, we hope to host a full tournament in February!

Each of our teams placed in the top three at a tournament this year.  The high school team started off the season by finishing 2nd in the Gateway Fall Tournament at Maplewood-Richmond Heights High School.  In January, the 8th grade and under team placed 2nd in the Bollinger Memorial Tournament at Wydown Middle School, and in February the 9th grade and under team took 2nd in the Gateway Class Tournament at Westminster Christian Academy.

The high school team finished the varsity league season with a 4-5 record. Although we didn’t make the playoffs this year, Ernest McCarter and Russell Bigham won trophies for boards one and two.

The middle school team finished 2nd in the junior varsity league this winter, and Eli Thomas and Ronak Mohanty tied for first place among 8th graders.

Here are all the students who participated in interscholastic competition this year:

Nick Babusis, Russell Bigham, Sam Bigham, Thomas Drake, Walker Hu, Ernest McCarter, Matthew Ritter, Tat Schmidt, Jackson Turnage, Nolan Turner, Aadi Bhagat, Ronak Mohanty, Frank Santen, Eli Thomas, Chris Wilson.

Coach Howard thanks his assistants Michael Bartley and Ben Russ for all of their help at Saturday tournaments this year, and his wife Jodi for coordinating all of our other events.

Although the COVID-19 outbreak ended our season before State and Nationals, we hope to have our annual awards ceremony sometime this summer!

Online Chess with Crossroads 
Howard has created a Crossroads College Prep club on Chess.com for current students and alumni.  We are scheduling online tournaments throughout the summer.  If you haven’t been contacted directly by Howard and would like to participate, please reply to howard@crossroadscollegeprep.org with your email address and he will send you links to join the club and play in the tournaments.