It's been a big month for the Coromandel Valley Chess Team.

At the end of Term 3, a team of 12 students - Charlie, Cian, Daniel, Dylan, Ewan, Finn, Jackson, Jake, Maggie, Micah, Nathan and Sebastian - travelled to Norton Summit Primary School, to take part in the Hills Zone Tournament.

The Hills Zone has some talented players, and with 5 schools and 45 students competing, it was always going to be a tough tournament.   After battling it out with Norton Summit PS and Basket Range PS all day, Coro finally broke away in the last few rounds to finish 4.5 points clear and take first place and the gold medals - the first tournament win for the school!    

While everyone did a fantastic job in representing the school, there were some fantastic individual results, with Maggie and Daniel both scoring 6.5 points from their 7 games to be the best 2 competitors on the day. Maggie was crowned tournament champion on a countback of games played.  Sebastian and Jake both finished in the top 10 players.    6 of our 12 players also set new personal best tournament scores.

The best news however, was that by winning the zone we qualified to take 5 players to the State Finals. Selecting our best 5 was not an easy task, but based on tournament results over the year, Daniel, Finn, Maggie, Nathan and Sebastian were selected for the team, and made the long trip north to Tyndale College to take part.

With 13 schools and 98 individual players taking part, the team knew they would be playing the best chess teams and players in the state.  Burnside, Glenelg and St Martin de Porres established an early break at the top, with a group of 8 schools including Coro, fighting it out for for the next few spots.  Burnside finally won out on the day, with Coro finishing in 11th place, but there were just 3.5 points separating us and 6th place.  A fantastic effort in our first State Titles. Everyone played well, but special mention to Daniel who scored 6.0 points from his 9 games, finishing in equal 10th position. 

A huge thanks to Opal Greenwood, Marcus Read, Kerry Coghlan and Jane General for assisting with transport over the 2 tournaments - without your help it would not have been possible to have our team compete.

The Chess Club continues to meet on Monday lunchtimes, and anyone is welcome to come along.    It would be great to see some new faces.

David Shaw