CHESS TOURNAMENT

Chess Tournament

On Friday the 27th of May, a group of seven students from varying year levels headed to the Old Castlemaine Gaol, for the Mount Alexander Schools Chess Tournament. We arrived early and the students got a few practice rounds in before the tournament began, with Year 12 student Sean challenging David Reynolds to a match.

All too soon, the tournament began. We had a team of five students, Sean  (Year 12), Tung (Year 11), Benjamin (Year 11), Ryan  (Year 11), and Aden (Year 9).  The remaining two students, Payton (Year 11) and Shanan (Year 8) were placed as substitutes for other schools who only had teams of 4.

The first match for Melton Secondary students was against Castlemaine Secondary College and all of our students won their first game, pushing our team from G Table up to A table.  The Melton Secondary students were then in a position to challenge Brighton Grammar and our students had two wins.  This unfortunately pushed the team back down the line. Melton Secondary then faced Alice Miller School and had another two wins. We then played St Bernard’s College and won four games, which improved our placing and we again took on Alice Miller School. 

At this stage Melton Secondary students had won four out of the five matches. The team had slowly worked its way back up to table A and once again played the top team of the day - Melbourne High School.  Unfortunately, our school lost all their matches but were excited to have the opportunity to test their chess skills against the National Champions. For our final game we were pushed down a few tables to compete against Gisborne Secondary College and had three wins to end the tournament.

Over all the day was a great success, with the students enjoying the excursion and the experience of the challenges. Some were excited to be inside the old goal, some were just happy enough with trying to lock our principal into one of the jail cells, and some were excited to be eating the chocolate brownies that where being sold on the day (with one student eating around six or seven all together!!).