Princeton Day School Chess Teams Place First in NJ Championships for Three Grade Levels

ByKrystal Knapp
1 Comment

 

(r-l) Jai Kasera (Princeton), Arjun Kumar (Moorestown), and Winston Ni (Princeton), holding their trophy for the fifth grade PDS chess team.
(r-l) Jai Kasera (Princeton), Arjun Kumar (Moorestown), and Winston Ni (Princeton), holding their trophy for the fifth grade PDS chess team.

 

Twenty chess players from Princeton Day School competed in the New Jersey Grade Championship on Sunday, Nov. 22, at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft.

PDS players Winston Ni, a fifth grader, and Eric Wu, a fourth grader, each won championship trophies. The PDS teams took first place in the first grade, second place in fourth grade, first place in fifth grade, second place in sixth grade, and first place in seventh grade.

Ni won the national championship, the NJ championship, and the New York City Championship last year. He was recently invited to compete at the World Youth Championship in Greece, the highest level of international competition among players his age.

Winston placed first in the fifth grade section, leading the team of Jai Kasera and Arjun Kumar.

The first grade team of Aiden George, Christian Lopez-Watt, Dhruv Nair, Eric Jiang and Isaac Kusminsky competed as a team at their first big tournament.

Competing in third grade were Clara Shin, Sonia Lackey and Claire Takeuchi.

In fourth grade, with only two players, first place winner Eric Wu and Aadi Shankar won the trophy for second place school team.

The sixth graders, primed to go to the National Grade Championship early in December, won second place. Albert Ming placed fifth and Dodge Martinson sixth.

Seventh grade girls Delia MaCarthy and Katie Jain won the second place team trophy.

Nick Jain played in the tough 11th grade section.

Krystal Knapp is the founding editor of Planet Princeton. Follow her on Twitter @krystalknapp. She can be reached via email at editor AT planetprinceton.com. Send all letters to the editor and press releases to that email address.

One Comment

  1. Congrats to these young champions for all their hard work.
    .
    And a big congrats to teacher Bonnie Waitzkin (not mentioned in the article), who has helped instill an amazing culture of learning through chess at PDS and throughout the Princeton-community.

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