Oh look here's that article I talked about last week.

Excitement buzzed in the air as hundreds of students and families flooded to downtown Seattle for the 2014 Washington State Elementary Championships. The tournament was held on the Seattle waterfront in Smith Cove Cruise Terminal, a two story building with 145,000 square feet of space. In addition to players and their families, numerous chess related organizations showed up and gave support for the event including Pico Dragons, Chessplayer.com, ChessSport.com, and Chess4Life.

Over 200 Chess4Life students participated, most of them placing in their grade sections against peers from all across the state. A few students placed particularly well including Aaron Barnhart (Kindergarten, 5^th place), Kimberly Ong (Kindergarten, 8^th place), Winson Wan (Kindergarten, 9^th place), Rushaan Mahajan (First Grade 4^th place), Miles Kuipers (First Grade, 3^rd place), Tarik Kameric (Second Grade, 1^st place), Ethan Pogrebinsky (Second Grade, 3^rd place) Brandon Peng (Second Grade, 6^th place), Idan Uritzky (second grade, 9^th place), Alec Beck (Third Grade, 1^st place) Tendo Lumala (Third Grade, 7^th place), Isaac Zhang (Third Grade, 10^th place), Neil Chowdhury (Fourth Grade, 1^st place), Everett Wang (Fourth Grade, 2^nd place), Richard Yang (Fifth Grade, 2^nd place), Anata Ranganathan (Fifth Grade, 5^th place) Freya Gulamali (Fifth Grade, 8^th place), Patrick Peng (Fifth Grade 10^th place), and Lorenzo Patton Jr. (Sixth Grade, 7^th place).

While many students showed up to compete, some were happy just to participate and learn. “I’m proud of my son for being here,” said one Chess4Life father, waiting on the upper floor for his son to finish a game below, ”It takes guts to participate in something this big, with such great young chess players!” The mood on the playing floor reflected the old adage ‘win, draw, learn,’ as every child came off the floor with smiles on their faces, regardless of game results.

“My first game went really well,” said Bellevue student Eashver Elango with a huge grin, “even though I lost my second game.”

Other students also expressed enthusiasm with their results. “I’ve won both of my games so far!” said Kevin Yang, “and I plan to keep on winning!”

In addition to sponsoring the event, Chess4Life helped staff the parking lot, event floor, and featured two booths by the doors to help welcome visitors on the way in. In addition the company provided a shuttling service for Chess4Life students and parents, sparing them the walk from the distant parking lot to the event center.

With the rousing success Chess4Life students were met with this year, it’s exciting to see how well our Nationals team in May will do in in Dallas, Texas!