The UTRGV Chess Team celebrated its back-to-back title as national champions of the President’s Cup with the campus community last Thursday.
The celebration took place in the Student Union veranda on the Brownsville campus. The chess team was also honored last Friday in the Bronc Room on the Edinburg campus.
Janna Arney, UTRGV deputy president, shared some words with the attendees and the chess team during the event in Brownsville.
“Last year, we celebrated the team when they came home, and we thought, what an extraordinary opportunity,” Arney said. “So, to be here a year later, I don’t know what word to use because ‘extraordinary’ doesn’t work anymore because it’s back to back.”
The team defeated the University of Texas at Dallas, Harvard University and six-time champion Webster University.
Grandmaster Andrey Stukopin, a graduate student, said that by the end of the first day, the team was already ahead in the competition, which took place April 6 and 7 in New York.
“On the first day, we won a very important match against Dallas,” Stukopin said. “We were playing against them in Round 1. We also beat them 3 to 1, which was unexpected, to be honest. … After that, we played against Harvard. It was actually a tough match. It was tougher than against Dallas, even though they have a weaker team. … After the first day, we were already ahead of Webster by 1½ points. When we were playing against them, we just needed to not lose by more than 2½ to 1½. We ended up beating them, even.”
Grandmaster Hovhannes Gabuzyan, a business junior, said the Webster chess team has strong players.
“[The] Webster team was super strong,” Gabuzyan said. “Their team of players are like, I would say, among the 100 in the world or moving close to it.”
Gabuzyan appreciates the support the UTRGV community continues to show toward the team and chess in general.
“It’s always a pleasure to get this support when we play,” he said. “If we win, we will get great support. We know if we don’t succeed, because nobody wins always, we know that we will get the same support.”
Chess Coach Bartek Macieja said he felt incredibly proud of the team’s achievements throughout the year and for defending the title once more.
“I’m very proud of them, especially winning the second time, confirming we are best in the nation, proving it wasn’t, like, [an] accidental one-time victory,” Macieja said. “That’s something great.
“I’m really happy to see that most colleges, the ones that don’t [qualify for] the Final Four and even some of them that qualified but didn’t succeed in winning the event, they were so happy and they were actually supporting us. They were happy we won the championship, so it means they like us as a team. After we won the championship, I received so many congratulations, even from coaches of other colleges and they said, ‘Yes, we wanted you to win.’”
On April 8, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted the following about the team’s success, “Congratulations to @UTRGV for winning their second national @USCHESS championship!”
–Lindsey Villalpando contributed to this report.
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