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Regional Qualifier Recap - March 7, 2009

Anyone who had the chance to read our previous articles regarding the last two tournaments held out at Heritage Elementary in Glendale, Arizona, might start to notice a trend upon reviewing this Recap: A battle for territory is taking place between the home team, Heritage Elementary, and the other West Valley powerhouse, 'Team Joel Johnson'!

From a sheer numbers perspective, there may not be a chess program or team in the entire state that competes with Heritage and its sister schools, Heritage North and Liberty; however, because Joel Johnson's students tend to be the more experienced and thus higher rated players, each tournament shapes out to be a battle of 'good quantity' from Heritage, vs. 'great quality' from Team Joel. Although this may be nothing more than an added side topic from the imagination of your writer, it is still fun to highlight and discuss. By my count, it remains unclear just who has the upper hand after our first three: 'Battle of the West Side Kings'. Come on, doesn't that sound catchy?

Although it may be unclear who has the upper had in the series overall, on March 7th the K-12 'Open' Section was dominated by Joel and his students. Joel finished a perfect 5-0, while his students, Chris Dussik, Ethan Morgan and Richard Cowan finished 2nd, 4th, and 7th, in that order respectively. The day also saw young Chris Dussik gain some serious rating points!

In the K-9 Section there were several good performances, but only one great one! Tyler Sypherd (member of Team Joel) stood head and shoulders above the crowd in both rating and height! He finished the day a perfect 5-0, which was no surprise at all in hindsight. In 2nd and 3rd place we saw Alfredo Cobon and Dokota Tobias in that order. Congratulations to both of them for earning qualification spots to the State Championship in April.

Although the K-6 was our largest section by far, it was clear from the outset that first place would belong to one of two players, Luc Lalonde or Daniel Pecherski. Both students of Nikolay Andrianov, Luc and Daniel seem to have a great friendship, which always makes those 'over the board' battles a little more difficult. The game started off very unclear, but in the end it was the higher rated player of the two who held his ground: Daniel Pecherski won clear first with a perfect 5-0 score. Rounding out the top 5, and all scoring 4 points a piece, were Luc Lalonde, Rachael Eng, Tre Berdeski, and Ciara Sypherd.

Only two players in the K-3 Section were not of Heritage 'descent'. Ironically though, only two spots would escape Heritage's grasp: 1st and 2nd! Capturing 1st place in his first ever USCF Rated tournament was Carl Riley Marget, while 2nd place belonged to Jeremy Cubbage of Liberty. As mentioned above 3rd -18th place would belong to Heritage Elementary chess team members.

Finally, the K-1 Section would give three qualification spots away to James Sypherd (1st place), Jerrett Videen (2nd place), and Jeremiah Ruiz (3rd Place). Just missing out was Derrick Wormerly of Heritage with 2.5 points.

Complete list of Qualified Players: