On Saturday 24 June the Logan Park Library hosted the Otago / Southland Interschool Team Championship chess Tournament. We were the defending champions. The top place school from both Otago and Southland would get to go to Nationals in September.

We had 3 teams entered.

A Team

Naoki Kozakai

Ramon Quennell

Tyne Grant

Geordie Stephenson

B Team

Aidan Dixon

Daniel Blakely

Zihan Fu

Charlie Bauchop

C Team

Austen Dustow

Nathan Mutch

Hayze Belaruby

Micah Duckles

The competition this year had 17 teams in total, a record, and was more even than in previous years.

Our C team beat both Waitaki Boys and John McGlashan, drew with Kings B and had 3 loses too, finishing a credible 10th equal.

The B team beat our C team and OBHS C, and drew with James Hargest A, Trinity and our A team too.

The A team beat Columba, James Hargest B, Otago Boys B and drew with Otago Boys A and our B Team.

The last round saw the A team against James Hargest and the B team were against Otago Boys A. A tight fought draw with Hargest and a narrow loss to Otago Boys meant the A team and Otago Boys A were left on exactly the same number of points, games and also had drawn in their round 3 game so a tie-breaker was needed to decide who was top in Otago..

Normally games are 20 minutes each player, but in NTA tie-breaker this is only 5 minutes each. Rapid fire turned out to be just that. Fortunately, with 80 people watching on we were victors winning all 4 games.