Chess Club News

Chess Club continues at Coromandel Valley, and while we lost our graduation year 6 students from 2023, we have had several new students coming along regularly, some of who have not played the game before.  It's been great to see some new faces.

Chess Club is held every Monday lunchtime in classroom 6J and all ages and abilities are welcome to attend.

Term 1 Interschool Tournament

In week 10, the term 1 southern zone interschool tournament was held, and a team from Coro travelled to St Martin de Porres School to join 60 students from 7 schools.   Amelia, Dexter, Eddie, Eliza, Griffen, Hamish,  Jackson, Kaiden, Mia, Oliver, Piper, Sahishnu, Walter and Willow made up the team, with the students ranging from Year 3 to 6 and five of them competing in a tournament for the very first time.

The southern zone has always been very competitive and this term was no exception. While the final team results were based on Primary and Secondary divisions, individual pairings were combined, meaning our students were often paired against secondary school students. For our first timers and younger players it was quite a challenge.

Despite the tough competition the Coro team did exceptionally well, finishing in 4th place overall and 2nd in the Primary Division, picking up silver medals for our top 4 point scoring players. An absolutely fantastic effort!  The first placed Primary team was St Martin de Porres, who finished just 2.0 points in front of us. Hopefully we can increase our skills across term 2 and beat them in the next tournament.

I was extremely proud of both the student's efforts and sportsmanship across the competition. Not only we did we get a great team result, but 10 of our 14 competitors either equalled or set a new personal best tournament score. Special mention to

- Dexter, Griffen, Kaiden, Mia and Willow who were all competing in their very first tournament

- Walter who was Coro's highest placed competitor, finishing in equal 6th place, with 5 wins from his 7 games.  

- Willow who was Coro's highest and the overall 2nd female ranked player, with 3.5 wins from her 7 games

- Mia who received the Fair Play Award

- our six Year 3 students, who were among the youngest competitors and who all had to face opponents from Secondary Schools.

A huge thanks to Carrie Julian, Opal Greenwood, Mel Wyness, Emma Wright and Steph Edwards for either assisting or offering to help transport the team. It's greatly appreciated, as the school cannot compete in tournaments without parents assisting.

David Shaw