Students from three Fairfax County public schools won team championships in all four K-12 divisions at the Virginia Scholastic Chess Championships held recently in Roanoke. Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) students also won individual championships in the K-5, K-8, and K-12 divisions of this year’s championships, sponsored by the Virginia Scholastic Chess Association.
The K-3 team from McNair Elementary School won the team title in its age group; team members are Christina Liu, Naitik Oza, Nisarg Oza, Sukir Chellan, Sharveen Balan, Saatvik Guddavalli, Hemanya Katram, Shreya Devaraj, Siri Devaraj, Nehal Mallipudi, Blessie Sujit, and Vibhava Bhat. In individual competition, Eduard Guo of Spring Hill Elementary finished second, Christina Liu of McNair Elementary finished third, and Pranav Swaminathan of Hunters Woods Elementary finished fifth.
In the K-5 category, the McNair team took top honors; team members are Arnav Gupta, Avnith Vijayram, Yash Date, Chandresh Parimala, Akshit Kumar, Aditya Pujari, Nishanth Kolakalapudi, Pranav Palleti, Yuvraj Kumpati, Prithul Baveja, Abhirai Tiwari, Sahas Vivek, Angela Sun, Kanish Marlecha, Simon Thomas, and Ashrith Aarani.
Colvin Run Elementary’s team finished in third place, and Poplar Tree Elementary finished in fourth place. Arnav Gupta of McNair Elementary won the K-5 individual competition.
In the K-8 category, Andy Huang of Kilmer Middle School captured the individual title. Teammate Garrett Heller finished second in the individual competition, and Geoffrey Davis of Jackson Middle School finished fourth. The winning K-8 team was from Rocky Run Middle School; team members are Andrew Wang, Aasa Dommalapati, Angela Chen, Andy Chang, Nithil Suresh, Neha Konduru, Vedanth Ramachandra, Anish Srinivasan, Karthik Bhargav, Alice Caoo-Dao, Austin Song, Joniel Jerome, Jonathan Lee, and Kaavya Karthik. Kilmer Middle School won second place, the team from Carson Middle School finished in third place, and Poplar Tree Elementary School finished fourth.
Praveen Balakrishnan of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST) won the individual K-12 title, and the team from TJHSST won the K-12 championship. Team members are Praveen Balakrishnan, Evan Ling, Justin Paul, Camden Wiseman, Alex Jian, Ryan Xu, Vishal Menon, Saigautam Bonam, Scott Becker, Sathya Gnankumar, Emerson Bertik, Andrew Song, Rachel Naidich, Minwu Kim, Eric Gan, Yoseph Mak, Akhil Goel, Pranav Karthik, Bhanu Kumpati, and Khushmeet Chandi. In K-12 individual competition, Evan Ling of TJHSST finished second, Sean Senft of McLean High School finished third, and Justin Paul of TJHSST finished fourth.
In the blitz competition, the McNair Elementary team won the K-5 team blitz competition. Team members are Avnith Vijayram, Chandresh Parimala, Christina Liu, Yuvraj Kumpati, and Sukir Chellan. TJHSST won the K-12 team blitz competition; team members are Justin Paul, Praveen Balakrishnan, Saigautam Bonam, Camden Wiseman, Eric Gan, Pranav Karthik, Akhil Goel, Emerson Berlik, Rachel Naidich, Scott Becker, and Bhanu Kumpati. In the K-12 individual blitz competition, TJHSST students Justin Paul came in second, Praveen Balakrishnan finished third, and Saigautam Bonam finished fourth.