MUI Secondary Inter-School Chess Team Championship – final report

Harrison College managed to capture two of the three sections of the Massy United Insurance Inter-school Team Chess Championship and with this became the overall winners of this year’s edition of the competition.

In the Under-20 section Harrison College finished on 49 out of 60 from their six matches. A match involves five games with two points for a win, one for a draw and no points for a loss. The team of Yutien Poon, Nitin Mahtani, Gabriella Cumberbatch and Paul Mordesur and Anush Pais dominated with the two top boards; Poon and Mahtani winning all of their encounters. In the second spot was Queen’s College on 32 points, while St. Leonard’s Boys captured the last podium spot with 22 points.

Kolij also captured the Under-13 section in even more dominating style, with 47 points, way ahead of Queen’s College “A” on 33 and then followed by Queen’s College “B”. Led by National Under-12 Champion, Candidate Master Leigh Sandiford, 2016 Under- 12 CARIFTA girls champion Azaria Johnson; also ably supported by Yeshua Hill, Gaybrianna Moore and Dominic Jackman, the Kolij team pummelled all of their opposition into submission and won all six matches.

However, in one division Harrison College was not able to take home the bacon. This was the Under-15 section, where Queen’s College eked out a slight two point win, accumulating 40 points to HC’s 38. The Queen’s team of Aaron Haynes, Azari Gittens, Tyson Holder, Shane Skinner and Kiarra Eversley could feel justifiably proud in halting Harrison College from acquiring a clean sweep in all of the sections.

The 2017 edition of the Massy United Insurance Inter-School Secondary School Team Chess Championship has seen a high presence of girls on the teams of most of the schools participating. This has put paid to the notion that chess is a mainly a male dominated and oriented sport and has been the highlight of the tournament so far; for not only have they just been pushing their pieces, the girls have been competing tooth and nail with their male counterparts.