Savvy moves bring chess victory for Boston high school
By Matt Collette and Kate Augusto, Globe Correspondents
Four Boston high school students have won the high school division of the Massachusetts Chess Championship, taking the trophy from Newton South, which had won the past three years.
Seniors Max Ehrman and Gabe Frieden, junior Jake Garbarino, and sophomore Danny Moraff, all students at the Commonwealth School, an independent high school in the Back Bay, won the team tournament Sunday. The four students assembled their team themselves and competed without a coach.
"It's very competitive. A lot of these kids, especially at the high school level, they've been playing chess all their lives," said Maryanne Reilly, president of the Massachusetts Chess Association.
William Wharton, headmaster at the 150-student Commonwealth School, compared the team's win with David beating Goliath.
"Generally, in something like this, you have a much broader pool of talent at the bigger schools," he said, referring to Newton South. "So when something like this happens, we're delighted."
Two hundred students from schools across the state gathered in the Natick High School cafeteria for the tournament, where each team member played four two-hour games.
The students may look "very calm, cool, and collected, but they're biting their lips," Reilly said. "They're very tense, because if you make a mistake you've lost."
"It's very hard and takes a lot of work and a lot of time," said Larry Eldridge, who coached several Boston teams from lower grade levels. "It's a tense, difficult competition. There's a lot of teams with the same goal."
The winning middle school team was from Newton and the elementary and primary school winners were from Cambridge.
