Chess for Success sends dozen to state competition

More than 50 students from across northwest Oregon converged on the Garibaldi Community Center for Tillamook County’s Chess for Success Tournament on February 10.

A dozen competitors and three teams qualified for the statewide tournament which will be held on April 12 and 13 at the Portland Expo Center.

Three teams of kindergarten through fifth graders and three teams of sixth through eighth graders participated in the Region 15 tournament, which was open to students from Clatsop, Lincoln and Tillamook Counties.

Chess for Success is an Oregon-specific program that was founded in 1991 in Portland to help promote chess through its subsidization at public schools for students who could not otherwise afford to play. James Cox introduced the program to Tillamook County at Garibaldi Grade School shortly after its inception and it has since grown to include teams at schools across the county.

At the February tournament, Hunter Gores, Jerzy Golden and David Hummel from Nehalem Elementary, Damien Mickelson and Draco Ng from East Elementary, Aaron Anctil and Karson McNutt from Neah-Kah-Nie Middle School, Talon Chodrick, Oliver Allen and Malachi Lopez from Tillamook Junior High School, Karsten Johansen from Neah-Kah-Nie High School and Vince Widmer from Oregon Charter qualified for the state tournament, as did the teams from Nehalem Elementary School, Neah-Kah-Nie Middle School and Tillamook Junior High School.