Exeter Chess Team Scores Big at Nationals

The Exeter Chess Team took home two of the top five awards at the 2018 K-12 National Chess Championship held from Dec. 14-16, 2018 in Orlando, Florida. In the 11th-grade division, PEA placed first out of fifteen teams, while the 10th-grade team earned fifth place out of twenty teams.

The competition hosted over 1700 players of different ages from around the United States. Since the PEA team does not usually compete at high school national contests until the spring, team members went through a more intensive training period to compensate for the earlier championship date. 

The 10th-grade team consisted of lowers Lucy Cai, William Clark and Thomas Guo; the 11th-grade team consisted of uppers Katya Davis, Harrison He, Ben Holderness and Zach Morris. Each participant played seven rounds against others in their grade level, with two matches on the first day, three on the second and two on the third. Team standing was calculated based on each team’s three highest individual scores, with a win scoring one point, a draw one-half of a point and a loss zero points. 

Davis and He scored 5.0 in their seven rounds, while Morris and Holderness scored 4.0. They placed 11th, 14th, 29th, and 32nd respectively out of 86 individual competitors.

Davis recalled that although the upper team had high hopes going into the tournament, their victory was not assured from the beginning. A single game can last over three hours, and the Exeter team had to wait until the last round to see whether or not they had won. “Going into round seven, our team was ahead by 1.5 points, so in order to know we had won for sure, we needed to win two of our last three games,” she said. 

In addition to the pressure of intense games, the continuous flow of gameplay meant that Exonians had little time to relax at the competition. “It can be stressful because you have to think about the upcoming assignments while focusing on your chess games,” He said, emphasizing that club members have to be really efficient with work during the tournament. “We didn’t really have a lot of downtime, so in the free time that we did have, we mostly just analyzed our games or did homework.”

Even with both the busy schedule and homework assignments, the 10th-grade team managed to do very well in the competition. Guo (20th), Cai (40th) and Clark (82nd) scored 4.5, 4.0 and 2.0 respectively. Cai noted that while the upper team performed consistently well, the lower team did comparatively well in the last round. 

“The 11th grade team is very strong so they were doing well for the entire competition. They were glad to be able to hold on to their team standings the entire way through,” she said. “We were happily surprised by our fifth place finish after doing pretty well the last round.”

For the rest of the school year, the team plans to compete amongst themselves and at the local level. Davis noted that smaller competitions would grant additional experience before next year’s national tournament. “Hopefully we’ll get more members to go to local tournaments so that they can join the team for nationals next year,” she said. 

Morris is equally optimistic for the club’s future endeavors. “The teams aim to keep competing and bring home more national titles,” he said.

The Chess Club is currently looking for new members and He hopes to bring more competitors to next year’s national tournament. “Going to a chess tournament can be a great way to take a break from classes,” he said. “Even if you don’t have a high rating, going to nationals can be a fun experience.”