Lincolnshire School Team Wins K5 National Championship

The five-member team from Half Day School in Lincolnshire are coming home with the first place trophy in the K5 Championship Division at the just concluded National Elementary Championships.  The top four scorers--Alex Bian, Conrad Oberhaus, James Wei and Jack Xiao--whose points are counted toward the team total, collectively had just two losses in the whole tournament.  All four are 2010 ICA Warren Scholars.  Their team record was 19 wins, 7 draws and 2 losses, giving them a total of 22.5 points and putting them in clear first by a full point over another powerhouse team, Stevenson Elementary in Bellevue, Washington.  The fifth player, Haoyang Yu, had a very respectable plus score of 4 points.  It's the second national championship for the Lincolnshire team.  Bian and Oberhaus had 6 points each, finishing on tiebreaks in third and fifth places, respectively.  Wei scored 5.5 points and finished 13th indivudually on tiebreaks, and Xiao, a third-grader and the team's youngest player, tied for 19th place (38 on tiebreaks) with five points.

Other Illinois players also had strong performances.  Champaign fourth-grader Anshul Adve had 5.5 points and came in 11th on tiebreaks in the K5 division.  In the K3 division, Burr Ridge third-grader Matthew Stevens, the K3 state champion, also had 5.5 points and came in 11th place.  And Bloomington 1st-grader Jason Scott Daniels, playing in his first national event, also racked up 5.5 points to earn the 14th place trophy.  The K1 division was actually the tournament's biggest championship section, with more than 300 students participating.  In the K6 division, Lincolnshire 6th grader Allen Guo scored 5 points, good enough for 30th place and a trophy.

Congratulations to all the Illinois students on a great event.