On March 5th the Trinity Chess Team took on Santa Rita.  Our top 22 players had no fear against Santa Rita’s top 19.  The match started great with Trinity leading 16.5 to 2.5 after the first round.

 

During that first round, one match that caught my eye was between Chase Stelmaschuk of Trinity vs Santiago Castillo of Santa Rita.  The game was in the middle stages, with both sides fairly close on material.  Chase had the better position with good control of the center and pieces invading his opponents position, and this opened up some tactics.  Chase used his bishop to capture his opponents pawn that was being defended by his opponents queen.  To his opponent, this seemed like a free bishop, so Santiago quickly captured Chase’s bishop with his queen.  But this was NOT a free bishop.  On Chase’s next move, he moved his knight to fork the king and queen which won the queen on the following move.  This was a nice tactic that was possible because Chase was controlling the center of the board.

 

The match continued much like it started with a final score of 43.5 to 10.5.  The following Trinity players went undefeated with no losses or draws: Christianne Meyer, Ebubecukwu “Joshua” Okoli, Chase Stelmaschuk, Tobechukwu “Daniel” Okoli, Evan Holmes, Sterling Wohlfahrt, Ryan Hart, Aharon Mathew, and Garrett Herrera.