The Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship took place Jan. 5-8 in Seattle, Washington, where UTRGV’s Chess Team A placed third and Team B placed fourth.
The tournament, made up of 85 different teams, each representing 44 different colleges in total, according to UTRGV Chess Coach Bartek Macieja, was one of the biggest and most prestigious tournaments of the entire semester. With only the top four placing teams qualifying to advance to the next competition, the main goal of the team was to finish among the top four and advance to the Final Four College Chess Championship later this semester.
With UTRGV being the only college this year to have two teams place in the top four, only one of its teams can attend, making Team A the qualifying team to represent the university.
With Webster University placing first, the University of Missouri placing second and UTRGV placing third and fourth, Saint Louis University, which finished fifth, qualified as the fourth team for the tournament.
Having participated in the Final Four a total of four times, winning three and placing second in the other, UTRGV has always been considered the underdog, Macieja said.
“The first time we won, other coaches, other people, everybody was just shocked,” he said. “[Saying] ‘How did they win?’ They thought, ‘Well, maybe some luck.’ Then we won for the second time. So, people understood, ‘Well, probably, it wasn’t just luck.’ But then, when we won for the third time, people realized that ‘Well,maybe they are good.’”
Considering it was each UTRGV player’s first Pan-American Tournament, Macieja is proud of how the team competed as well as the place they received.
“The goal of the competition was to qualify [for] the Final Four,” International Master Jurai Druska said. “So, even if we finished fourth, we would be happy.”
A member of the UTRGV A Team, Druska noticed in past competitions that he would lose energy by the end of the tournament. To prepare for the Pan-American, he took up jogging to build his mental stamina.
“I gained some rating points, so that means I played better than I was expected to, so I’m happy,” Druska said.
Asked how he felt about competing without Team B during the Final Four Tournament, Druska said it was unfair and believed they played the better game.
During the final rounds, it was a close match between the UTRGV B Team and Webster University.
“In the last round, it came up to me … and if I could draw, but I couldn’t draw the game, we would have gone instead of [Team A],” International Master Ekin Ozenir said. “So, it was, like, a pretty good tournament for us.
“Finishing in the top four feels good. Of course, they finished third and we can’t go into the final tournament now but we did better than I expected for the tournament.”
Macieja said the chess team will compete in other tournaments in preparation for the upcoming Final Four Championship, as well as group training, individual training and online tournaments.
