Faculty Advisor, Mr. Bill Boericke shares the following overview of the last year for our Chess Team!
Over the past school year, due to the pandemic, most local and national chess tournaments were cancelled, and many were replaced with online competitions. In these events, the Stuyvesant Chess Team was triumphant at the city, state and national levels.
At the 2020 US Chess/Chesskid K-12 Showdown (this year’s national grade-level championships), our juniors, led by Rayat Roy, Ryan Chen, Benjamin Botnik, and Daniel Fridlyand, were able to edge out Gulliver Prep, from Miami, Florida, to take first place. The Stuy sophomores, led by Eugene Yoo, Kyle Chan, Ryan Lee, and Jason Xia, dominated the 10th grade section, scoring three points more than the second-place team.
Stuyvesant won the Greater NY Scholastics with a score of 16.5/24, edging out perennial rival, Jericho High School, by half a point. Team Captain Justin Chen deserves special mention for scoring a perfect 6/6 to take first place individually.
At this year’s State Championships, Stuyvesant was dominant, beating the second-place team, Columbia Grammar Preparatory School, by a five-point margin (16/24 versus 11/24).
At the 2021 National Online Scholastic Championships Qualifier, Stuyvesant’s score of 23 out of a possible 32 was good enough for first place. Justin Chen, Eugene Yoo, Kyle Chan and Charles Hua were the top scorers for Stuy.
Congratulations to Team Captain Justin Chen for a tremendous high school chess career! Next year Justin will be studying accounting at NYU’s Stern School of Business. We will miss his game and we will miss his leadership.
