Chess Success

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

The Chess program at The King’s School has flourished in 2019 with increasing numbers and enthusiasm from students across all Year groups. Every Wednesday morning, the Chess Club is attended by more than 30 students who practise and hone their skills acquiring valuable strategies and moves to be used in their upcoming games.

The year commenced with 65 Kingsmen entering the Richard Yeend Chess competition, an internal competition played over seven rounds, based on the Swiss format where players are never eliminated but instead are paired after each round. The winner is the player with the most amount of points after all seven rounds, with this year’s tournament finishing with three players tied on 6 points each. To determine an eventual winner, a three-way playoff was scheduled and resulted in third place going to Kristian Kocic (Year 9), second to Felix Chan (Year 8) and the winner being Jacob Camilleri (Year 8). Congratulations to all students who entered this exciting competition!

In Term 2, King’s participated in the NSW Junior Chess League competition, an external competition involving multiple schools across Sydney. The competition is divided into four regions, with King’s situated in the Western division. Other schools in this include James Ruse, Girraween and Baulkham Hills High School who are all academically selective high schools. The competition is also divided into three age groups, Junior (Years 7 and 8), Intermediate (Years 9 and 10) and Senior (Year 11 and 12). The King’s School entered two teams into each age group, with all teams performing superbly. Highlights were the Intermediate A team who came second in their division and the Junior A team who won their division and represented Western Sydney in the regional finals. The four members of the Junior A team, Jason Yan (Year 7), Jacob Camilleri, Felix Chan and Daniel Wei (Year 8) drew 2 all in the regional semi-final against North Sydney Boys High School, but unfortunately lost on a board count back. Despite this, these four students deserve congratulations for their outstanding efforts across the season.

More recently, The King’s School competed in the GPS Chess competition, placing a close fourth position. Ten students represented the School with honour in this prestigious competition, including Eric Xu (Year 12), Braian Chen (Year 11), Steven Wang and Xing Gao (Year 10), Kristian Kocic (Year 9), Jacob Camilleri, Felix Chan and Daniel Wei (Year 8), Jason Yan and Jordan Raffoul (Year 7). Congratulations to all our Chess players on an excellent season!

Mr Bruce Barry Master in Charge

King’s possesses a vast array of musical talent from Kindergarten to Year 12, with the String orchestra commencing with Pre-Kindergarten tutoring leading into a complete Kindergarten orchestra. This musical groundwork starting so young is then carried onto the junior years, and by Years 4 to 6 there is an immense amount of talent and hard-working String musicians forming an award-winning Chamber Strings.