The Illinois Chess Association is proud to announce the 2021-2022 class of Warren Junior Scholars and Rising Stars. 

The Warren Junior Scholar program was started over 30 years ago by Helen Warren, a past ICA president, to recognize the most accomplished and promising scholastic chess players in the state.  In 2015, the Rising Stars program was added to recognize the next tier of up and coming scholastic players.  These two programs together recognize the top scholastic chess talent in our state.  Invitation to these programs is based on USCF chess ratings and active participation in chess tournaments.

In addition to providing recognition to these players, the program’s purpose is to nurture the highest-potential scholastic chess players so that they may compete on a national and international stage, and to provide students with an opportunity for rigorous study that will give them the skills to become leaders in other fields as adults.

More information about these programs can be found here: http://www.il-chess.org/aboutwjrs-72.

Many events for this group are already in the planning stage for this year, including Sunday evening online training sessions, an in-person or online training day and awards banquet with a date TBD and several online tournaments.

Although a lot of effort is put into identifying the players who qualify for this program, it is possible that some players may have been inadvertently missed.  If you are aware of a player who should be on the list but isn’t, please check the qualifications HERE and then email name, USCF #, and grade to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. 

If you find your name on this list, you should have already received an email from the director. If not, please email Mr. Luster at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Congratulations from the ICA!

 

The 2021-2022 Illinois Chess Association’s Warren Jr. Scholars and Rising Stars

Warren Jr. Scholars

Saanvi Adusumalli	Rohit Guha	Shakira Luster	Patrick Rao	Ashley Yan
Sarah Lin	Aditya Gupta	Sadkrith Malladi	Shreyas Reddy	Anthony Yang
Mohit Bayyarapu	Aria Hoesley	Vikram Oberai	Anshul Shetty	David Yong
Scott Escalera	Jack Heller	Gabriel Gronski	Margarita Tsyganova	Owen Zhang
Nicholas Bruha	Nicholas Laden	Anisha Oberai	Julian Wang	Alex Zhao
Ria Raj	Michael Li	Elijah Platnick	Colin Wicks
Avi Kaplan	Louisa Zhang	Natalie Wisniowski	Vamsi Munaganuri

 

Rising Stars

William Cahill	Gunn Kim	Sanjith Prabhu	Linda Pham
Christopher Von Hoff	Arnav Gupta	Layla Rodriguez	Justin Zhang
Ethan Gagliano	Himani Musku	Christopher Sakaliyski	Jacob Plotnick
Maurya Chandra	Andrey Novikov	Aryan Shrigadi
Dimitrios Deligiannis	Aditya Oberai	Aayush Thakkar