Niles North High School claimed the Under 1600 Championship at the USCF Nationals concluded April 6 in San Diego. The team tied with a Miami high school with 18.0 points, but had the higher tiebreak.

The Skokie-based high school just missed another championship by half a point, placing second in the Under 1200 section behind a Virginia team.

Lisle-based Benet Academy placed fifth in the U1200, with Oak Lawn's Richard's High School taking tenth place.

In the Under 800 section, Richards placed second on tiebreaks, tying with the champions from Texas. 

Out of 34 team-entries in the Blitz event, Whitney Young claimed third place honors with Naperville North taking sixth place.

Lead by Sam Schmakel's 10.0/12 and Jimi Akintonde's 9.0 points, Whitney Young also received positive contributions from Caelan Burke-Kaiser (7.0), Philip Parker-Turner (6.0) and Phuc Hoang (6.0). Based on the top four, the WYHS compiled a 32-point score, just a single point behind the winning high school from Texas.

Naperville North's Blitz squad was paced by Bradley Guan's 8.0/12 and Mark Reed's 7.5. Aaron Willer, Matthew Wu and Danny Emge all posted 7.0's with two of those counting towards the team total. Juniors Willer and Wu were both 2014 IHSA Co-Champions: Willer was the Board 4 Champion with the top tiebreak of two players going undefeated; Wu had also gone undefeated on Board 3 to partake of the co-championship, placing third on tie-breaks in Peoria.

The Niles North U1600 Championship was spearheaded by Eric Musielski's 5.5/7 score. Lyle Rubin (4.5), Jiedong Duan (4.5) and Adam Rubinberg (4.0) rounded out the team's tally.

The U1200 Niles North squad was lead by dual 6.0/7's from Sohail Amin and Bolortuya Tumurbaatar. Nahiyan Chowdhury (5.0) and Ross Schneider (4.5) contributed to the team result.

Benet's fifth-place U1200 squad included a trio of 5.0/7's from Patrick Noble, Russell McKenzie and Alec Mather, with Matthew DeMario finishing at 4.5. DeMario was the state Board 6 champion at the 2014 IHSA Finals in February.

Richard's tenth-place team score in the U1200 was derived from a pair of 4.5's from Adrian Villacorta and Thomas Doon, along with a pair of 4.0 results from Saim Sajjad and Kevin Williams.

Richard's U800 team featured Adiran Chavarria's 6.0/7 and 4.0's from Robert Cook, Isaiah Perez and Juliet Lucente.

In the Open section, Whitney Young finished tied for 10th place out of 51 teams (14th on tiebreaks), just ahead of 15th-place Naperville North (15.5 versus 15.0 points). With only three of the allowed four players contributing, Benet Academy finished in a tie for 18th, 20th on tiebreaks with 14.0 points.

A more complete recounting of individual results can be found in a companion story on this site: http://www.il-chess.org/index.php/youthnews/655-2014-hs-nationals.