Somerset College Inter-School Chess State Finals

From Friday 16 through to Sunday 18 October, Somerset College students were engaged in the various divisions of the Queensland Inter-School State Finals for 2020. There were students ranging from Years 1 through 12 and it was awesome to see all students supporting each other.

Girls State Finals

On Friday, the Girls State Finals was held at MacGregor State School with 20 Somerset girls representing the school.

In the Primary division, Somerset 1 finished fourth in the Open Division, just half a point outside of third. Somerset 2 finished = sixth, Somerset 3 finished =13th, and Somerset 4 finished 19th. Individually Nicole Yuan and Annika Lim both scored Merit ribbons (5/7 and 4.5/7 respectively), whilst Illia Dunworth, Kitty Pallister, Kseniia Igumenova, Adriana Smith and Paris Liu all scored 50 per cent or better. It was also highly encouraging to see half the team made up of Year 1 and 2 girls, which is exciting for the future!

In the Secondary division, Somerset 1 proved far too strong for the opposition to clinch the title of Queensland Secondary Girls State Champions! The girls have all been putting plenty of practice in with their coaches for the last few months and it’s certainly paid off. Melody Yang went undefeated with 6.5/7 for first place overall, whilst Lyanna Chan scored 6/7 to get 2nd place. Jennifer Yeung scored 5/7 whilst Nina Varcoe and Debby Kuo (team 2) scored 3/7.

This now means that team 1 (Lyanna, Jennifer, Melody and Nina) will now represent Queensland at the Australian Schools Teams Online Championship (online due to travel restrictions) on December 5 and 6.

Open State Finals

Somerset sent three teams to the Queensland Inter-School State Finals on the weekend with two teams competing in the secondary division and one in the primary division.

The Primary team (Calen Tang, Alessandro Martinese, Elijah Hadikusumo, Oscar Credland-Ballantyne and Harrison Qu) performed above expectations throughout the weekend with a series of hard-fought games. The team finished in 12th position, but this doesn’t reflect the performance as they took points off the teams finishing first, second, third, seventh and 10th, including a 2.5-1.5 victory against MacGregor SS! For this team, gaining experience was most important, with Oscar being the oldest in year 5, 3 year 3 students, and Harrison only being in year 1! We are super proud of all five students and their achievements on the weekend.

In the Secondary division, the students performed very well with the first team (Byron Morris, Kenny Ming, Oliver Yang, Eason Wang) coming in second place behind Churchie and ahead of TSS on count-back. Again, there were many hard-fought battles with each student playing some great chess at times through the event.

The second team (Jason Li, Charlie Liu, Lyanna Chan, Kona Baldock) finished = seventh over the six rounds with all players performing strongly across the tournament.