REPORT OF THE MARIN COUNTY CHESS CHAMPIONSHIPS

FEBRUARY 12, 2005 by Jeff Gordon

Our tournament went very well. It was a real pleasure working with Ray.
We had 193 kids attend the tournament. They came from 46 different schools from throughout Marin County.  According to Ray, nothing like this has ever happened in Marin County before. This was the very first chess tournament for all but about two dozen of them! We had enough participants so that K's played only K's, 1st played only other 1st graders and so on up through 5th grade. 6th through 8th played in one combined section but trophies were awarded based on grade level placing. Trophies donated by Saint Mark's School were given out to the top three in each grade/section including all ties for third.  There were two  separate sections for rated players - under 850 and open. It was a beautiful sunny day and lots  happy parents and kids at the end. The awards ceremony had originally been scheduled to start at 3 P.M. and it actually did start at 3:10. Not bad for our! first time. Lanette and was the MC and did a great job.  There was a really wonderful ambience throughout the day. I overheard one parent describing the event as being like one big party. A reporter and photographer from our main local newspaper,the Marin Independent Journal, came and spent almost two hours at the event. Hopefully they'll publish a good article about it.  I don't know if we want to have cross-tables published. I'll talk to Lanette about it. On a personal note, having now organized a tournament with 200 participants, I cannot even begin to imagine all the work you must have put in to run state tournaments with over 1,000 and to do it so well.

Regards,
Jeff

Some additional info. about the 1st Annual Marin County Scholastic Chess Championship: Ray, Lanette and I were the organizers and Ray was the chief TD. assisted by Dan Trimbaugh, who ran the rated sections. Gabe Gordon, Davis Xu and some of Ray's former students who are now in high school, functioned as assistant TD's on the floor.  All of the participants received a very nice certificate of participation which was printed on parchment and included their individual names. Champions (1st place finishers in each of the sections) were as follows: Open Section: Puneeth Gadangi (Saint Mark's), Under 850 Max Saunders (Saint Mark's), K Julian Vasquez (Saint Mark's),1st Douglas Vetter (Saint Mark's), 2nd Brian Jakiemiec (Saint Mark's),3rd Ryan Louie (Marin Country Day), 4th Austin Schafer (Lynwood), 5th Duncan Brugler (Saint Mark's), 6th Ben Greenberg (Del Mar Middle), 7th Josh Phelps (Bolinas-Stinson), 8th Sam Rohrer (White ! Hill Jr. High).

The tournament was held on Saturday, February 12, 2005 at Saint Mark's School in San Rafael, California, and was open to any child who was a resident of Marin County or who attended a Marin County School.

Jeff