We did it!

We are trophy hogs in C1022!

After four long hours of waiting for results, the boys began petering in with their results and games.  Alex was the first with a great win.  His round 7 game is by far the best game of the tournament.  Wait 'til you see the move Alex pulls out of somewhere.  Andrew is next with another win and he feels he is finally coming into his game.  Could we please add another set of rounds for tomorrow?  A great ending to three grueling days of tournament play.  Shane and Miles have a difficult time and are fighting fatigue and a distinct lack of focus today.  Nick walks in the room and crashes on the bed - another tough game played to a draw.

Where is Desmond?  If Desmond loses his game, our team does not place in this tournament!  Desmond plays hard and to the bitter end against his opponents and is still playing.  I arrive at the tournament hall in time to watch his end game.  I watch his hand raise and the TD visits to make a ruling.  Desmond has less than 30 seconds to queen and mate his opponent, but there was an illegal move and Des gets two more minutes added to his clock.  He sits back down and patiently works the ending for a win.

My players were highly out-rated on paper, but I was confident that they could compete at this level.  If I was able to field a full team in the U1600s and the U1200s, players would have been playing more at their level.  For our first National Tournament and the only team without any exposure at the national high school level, we did darn good to receive a trophy for 24th place out of 52 teams and 247 players in our section.