Chess Team Amasses Honors

The ISS Chess Team has amassed honors on the local, state and national level!

Winner of April’s Arthur Davis Shores Scholastic City Chess Championship (Birmingham City Chess Championship Tournament), the team won third place in the Alabama State Scholastic Chess Championship Tournament in Daphne, Ala., in March. Alex Szasz '11 also won third place individual honors at the state tournament.

At the 2011 High School Nationals held April 28-May 1 in Nashville, Tenn., Justin Morris '11 tied for 7th place in the U.S. out of 247 competitors in the second highest-rated section at the tournament. Morris and Szasz played as a two-man team in the Over 1200 Section against mostly four-person teams and were in trophy contention until the last round, and Gi Yun Lee '12, Jian Yu Chen '12, Jasmine Berry '14 and Billy Knapp '15 came in 14th place in the U.S. as a team out of 54 teams in the Under 1200 Section. (Players are placed in sections on the basis of a rating system calculated from their performance in tournaments.)

The ISS Chess Team is coached by Charles Smith, founder and director of Magic City Chess U, a nonprofit that promotes chess among youth in the Birmingham area.