Crystal Lake Middle School won their 3rd straight Polk County Chess Championship Saturday (1-08-11). They took 3 out of the 4 monthly tournaments with each of the three wins posting perfect 16-0 team points. I am very proud of them.

Coach

i just wonder how the team will do next year. D, trevorn, zach, joe, hunter, and i are leaving next year. i think clms will still be #1 or #2, but maybe not the dominate force we've been for the past 2 years.

 Zach and Joe are 7th Graders. Joe ended up dropping the "catch up program" that would have sent him to 9th grade next year.

It will be hard to duplicate this years dominance... a season for the ages... I do agree with you there.

You just need to sharpen your scholastic sandbagging skills -- once your class B and A players get rated over 1500 it's time to toss them out for the B and A players still rated 1200   So just think of it as a rebuilding year (i.e. be sure not to let them play any rated events).

zach pyle is in 8th grade, and joe staying is great for the team.

 Every year is a "rebuilding" year because of 8th grade graduation. 2 years ago when we won it for the first time we lost most of our team to graduation and transfers for the following year and I thought it was going to be tough to defend our title. The new players did great though... we won all four monthly tournys and defended our title. Last year was the same leading up to this years performance... again having the new players doing great.

the reason for this is the noobs had better practice each year. as players like me and D got better, we gave noobs more to learn from playing us.

 You are correct DC. This combined with the other things we do in class have helped new players every year rapidly go from little chess skills to tournament ready chess skills.

wow the teams doing amazing bettering the school every year

 It was an increadable Jr. But, as good as it was... this years clms chess team didnt win all 4 tournaments like you guys did the year before. Still, posting three perfect tournys (4 or more guys going 4-0... 3x) was sweet.

 man that was total domination , i might come over to crystal lake to help with the new players i might be a little rusty. i think other schools think were on brain steroids

 brain steroids.. that is too funny. but I tell ya... this year we absolutely crushed the academy schools

Our first Tourny back inOctober we had 6 students go undefeated.. 5 went 4-0... and 1 went 3.5. And thats just our FIRST tourny of the year