Chess Team Takes No Prisoners In Tournament
Their pugnacious competitiveness on the chessboard is tempered by their inability to pose for a group photo – these are your Blue Devil Chess team members. The group includes (back row) Matthew Dunn, John Bennett Stevens, Jamalachi Jones, Breeze Hughes, and Annika Olson; (front row) Nethanel Dunn, Madison Davis, and Robin Davis. – Photo Provided
Chess Team Takes No Prisoners In Tournament
By Sim Ramirez
Water Valley High School
PHILADELPHIA – Venimus, vidimus, vicimus,” the phrase rang through the edifices of Neshoba Central Elementary as the Water Valley Chess Team left only detritus and lamentations in its wake at the 2015 Mississippi Scholastic Grade-Level Chess Cham-pionships in Philadelphia this past Saturday – “We came, we saw, we conquered.”
The chess team left the Central Mississippi battlefield with three state champions and a reckoning that Blue Devil chess is an indomitable force.
This year’s chess team, coached by John Person and Upton Reynolds, took a small, yet powerful, contingent of Blue Devils to lay waste to the opposing factions in this chess competition. The team consisted of 2nd grader – Robin Davis; 3rd grader -Madison Davis; 4th grader – Nethanel Dunn; 5th graders – Annika Olson and Breeze Hughes; 7th Graders – Matthew Dunn and Jamalachi Jones, and 9th grader, John Bennett Stevens.
Each student contributed to the relentless Blue Devil attack and ensured that the team would place their hands on the hardware that highlights their victory in these skirmishes.
The Valley now has three state champions to call their own: Nethanel Dunn, 4th grader, walked away unscathed and unbloodied, with an undefeated match record of 5 and 0. Matthew Dunn, 7th grader, continued the Dunn domination of the chessboards, with an additional undefeated match record in this competition, 4 and 0. Matthew continues a formidable win streak of nine-in-a-row in state tournament play. John Bennett Stevens, ninth grader, tied for first place. Yet knowing that only one can be called the state champion, the two combatants acquiesced to a final playoff game to settle the title. In a match rife with intensity and a focus unparalleled in most traditional sports, John Bennett Stevens emerged victorious, These three titans of the chessboard have practiced, studied, and played with a tenacity to ensure that these victories, these state championships, would be theirs.
In addition to these champions, this Blue Devil force was also able to come away with two second-place finishes: 2nd grader, Robin Davis and her sister, Madison Davis, 3rd grader. Madison was also the recent grade level winner at our own Water Valley Scholastic Tournament earlier this fall. Both girls informed the opposition that they are on their way to laying claim to future championships and that the competition best be prepared for that eventuality.
These few, these happy few, this band of brothers and sisters were united in their battle plans and their interminable onslaught was a product of their commitment to the greatest of all games. They worked diligently on the many facets of the game and worked tirelessly to improve, to prove themselves champion.
The chess club and team meets Mondays at the high school from 3:15 to 4:30 and at Davidson Elementary on Tuesdays, after school until 4:00 p.m. All are welcomed and those that feel that they can play, well, the Blue Devil chess team can help them reassess this opinion.
