More than 20 young chess players from the Rochester area participated in the U.S. Chess Federation's national senior scholastic tournament last weekend in Minneapolis.
Students in grades six through 12 joined about 1,000 other players from throughout the country at the Hyatt Regency for seven rounds of play.
Peter Hansel, a seventh-grader at Friedell Middle School, won in his USCF rating class of 1400-1499 in the championship round.
Most of the Rochester area players are in the USCF's K-12 division of under-1200 rating. In the under 1200 standings, the Century High School team achieved 19 points, placing it in a tie for fifth place out of 63 teams in the tournament.
Century's was the highest finish of a Minnesota school in a rated division. Team members were senior Henry Newshutz; juniors Cheenar Banerjee, Gregory Nathan, Enoch Tan and Michael Ekker; sophomore Rory Li; and freshmen Ethan Kub and Ted Woolner.
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Also in the under-1200 division, the top Rochester finisher was Richard Huang, a sixth-grader at Kellogg Middle School, who placed 19th. In that same division, four Rochester students tied for 30th place: Ben Jensen, a sophomore at John Marshall High School; Mikael Paulik, of Lourdes High School; and Century juniors Banerjee and Nathan.
