Our Grand Prix Champs

The winners of our 2017-18 NSCF Grand Prix competition were presented their awards after the November 18, 2019 tournament held at Greenwich Country Day School. It was exciting to have so many of these aspiring chess players on hand to pick up their plaques in person and to play in the tournament. For the complete list of Grand Prix winners, click here.

For many years, the NSCF has organized its scholastic chess tournaments into a Grand Prix, so that, in addition to prizes for the individual tournament, everyone who participates is earning Grand Prix points. As we have shared before, anyone can have a great tournament, but the Grand Prix acknowledges consistent performance over time, which is the real inspiration we want to share with our students. This consistency pays off as players find that they can remain focused for longer periods of time as the games get tougher, and they learn how to better handle the emotional aspects of winning and losing. They also see improvement in their games, and their ratings, as Rohan Seth, our 1st grade champion, pictured with our Senior Tournament Director, Ricardo Perez Billinghurst, can attest. New to chess just over a year ago, after his first tournament of the 2017-18 season at Greenwich Academy, he had a rating of 675. Fourteen NSCF tournaments later, after the Trinity Elementary event, his rating had gone up 150 points to 825, and after GCDS it’s 981!

Becka Kvirikadze, who came second in our 2nd grade competition, also played in 14 NSCF events last year. Becka plays in a lot of other tournaments, as well. The Bronxville student saw a ratings increase of 450 points, to 1157, in a single year!

Erik Nebylovych (pictured on the Featured Players page), who won the 3rd grade championship, played in 7 NSCF tournaments last year. From a rating of 1219 after Columbus Elementary last December, he hit a career-high of 1339 after a successful showing at Ward Elementary in April.

Xavier Frankenberger, who participated in our White Plains classes for aspiring tournament players, saw his rating improve almost 160 points, to 966, over the season, and won the 4th grade championship. Xavier recently achieved a new high of 1100 after our Greenwich Academy tournament earlier in November.

Thomas Schiwek was also a student in our Improving Tournament Play classes as well as our summer camp in Hartsdale. He played 15 NSCF events and improved 379 points, from 937 to 1316 by the end of last season, earning the 5th grade Grand Prix award for his effort

As you move up the ladder, ratings improvement becomes exponentially more difficult, but even our higher-rated players prove that these increases come with persistence.

Middle School champion Jared Schwartz improved over 100 points over the season playing in 6 NSCF events

…while Miles Chun also improved over 100 points, from 1404 to 1515, over the season on his way to winning the High School Grand Prix section. Miles also won the Future Masters section at GCDS on Sunday and has a new career-high of 1609!

We hope these students’ successes will inspire many more young players to keep persisting even when the going gets tough.