7th graders win State Championship!!

Tom Miranda brought home the 3rd place trophy leading the 7th grade team to a state championship.
Magnus Nordby added 2 more points and Anton Priborkin (playing up one grade)  added 1 more.

The 8th grade team actually scored more points, but finished in 3rd (tied for second but lost out on tie-breaks) led by Ben Wirrer who brought home the 2nd place trophy. Dan Keis and Alex Pressman added 2 points each)

(Dan - you've got to stay for awards! They tied to give you a trophy, but you weren't there. That would have given you 5 merit points instead of 2.5, which in turn would have earned you your sliver medal! You also didn't get your good-looking face into the team picture.)

P.S. Mace Henry brought home the 2nd place trophy for 7th grade and Sam Pressman brought home the 2nd place trophy for High School.

So if the rest of you are having trouble beating Tom, Mace, Ben, Dan, etc., hang in there! These guys are getting good - rally good and the rest of the world is having trouble beating them also. 

Soak in the glory now. Not all the best competition was there. The next two tournaments get more serious!
Metcalf will show up, Chippewa was missing a good player (but so were we). Edina Southview didn't have a full team in either grade. But we definitely made a statement today. 

Set aside these dates:

March 9th is SCA's Jr. High Championships. We are capable of bringing home some hardware, but I think Metcalf and Chippewa are still favorites. We still have work to do.

March 23-24 at the Crowne Plaza is a different animal. Run by the USCF with clocks, notation, and complete silence. This brings out every serious player in Minnesota and a few beyond our borders. It will be interesting to see how we fare.

The nice thing about these next tournaments is that we can have everybody on one team. We only count the top 4 scores, so you don't have to worry about messing up. If you mess up we simply don't count your score. If you end up as one of the top 4, we count your score.