Charles F Broome Primary School ‘A’ team swept aside all the opponents it faced to emphatically win the 2024 Barbados Interschool Primary Chess championship held at the Wildey Gymnasium earlier in the week.
Charles F Broome finished on a perfect 25 game points to finish a commanding 7 points ahead of the second-place team St. Giles ‘A’. The Charles F Broome B team came in third position on 15 points, edging out two other teams on the tie-break. Those teams were St. Giles ‘B’, Beyond the Box Education and Sharon Primary.
The event was played over two days with a 5-round format. Each team consisted of 5 players and up to two reserves. The event consisted of 20 registered teams from just over a dozen separate primary schools.
The winning team in descending board order of Chaz Reifer-Belle, Nathan Simmons-Patterson, Janiyah Browne, Darren Toppin, Nathan Culpepper with Kymani Gayle as the reserve went through out the two days with an unblemished record to make themselves and school very proud. It was always expected that the Charles F Broome ‘A’ team would have been the favorite team as it possesses several age-category champions or national representatives in its ranks in the likes of Reifer-Belle, Browne, and Gayle. However, its total domination was of credit to their erstwhile coach Mr. Corie Elcock. The first five members of the team won the board prize, meaning that they score 100% from their respective games. A feat only repeated by two St. George ‘C’ players Shakeem Applewaithe and Joash Sealy, playing on board 4 and 5 for their team.
The St. Giles ‘A’ team comprising of Nyall Bushell, Aaron Tash, Kyi chai Straughan, Callum Foster and Donte Christian finished a commendable second. They won four of their five matches, suffering only one defeat at the hands of the eventual winners. Tash, Straughan and Foster all won special prizes in their respective boards, meaning that they scored more the 67 % of the available maximum score.
The Charles F Broome ‘B’ team of Amelia Mottley, Nia Clarke, Daisha Rose-Parris, Liam Byer, Arielle Gittens and Akeli Grazette came in third to give their school more glory, but it was a close-run thing. They finished ahead on tie-break from St. Giles ‘B’ and Beyond the Box Education who also had 15 points and only a half-point ahead of Sharon Primary and St. George ‘C’ who scored 14 ½ points respectively.
This was a restart to the Primary Interschool team championship after the Covid pandemic and President of the Barbados Chess Federation(BCF) lamented that he was very happy to see the over a hundred plus students taking part in the event. Students received their prizes from the National Sports Council (NSC) director Mr. Neil Murrel, General manager of the Barbados Olympic Association(BOA) Glyne Clarke and woman’s candidate master and 2023 Central American and Caribbean Under 14 female bronze medal winner Chanon Reifer-Belle, a product of the last 2019 event.
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