Chess tournament at Gentry Middle School draws record crowd
Saturday, February 20, 2010 5:33 p.m. CST
BY Christiana Nielson
COLUMBIA — The few sounds in the Gentry Middle School on Saturday were chess pieces clicking on boards and the occasional muffled “check” or “good game.”
The middle school hosted the annual Columbia Open Chess Tournament, a citywide elementary and middle school competition for students ranging from kindergarten to seventh grade living in the Columbia School District.
According to Denise Zimny, a Gentry guidance counselor and sponsor of the school’s chess club, the tournament has run for 13 years. It drew the largest crowd on record Saturday with 103 players.
Buzz Bledsoe, a parent organizer and former chess club coach at Gentry, said 75-80 kids entered in 2009.
Bledsoe, now the chess coach at Jefferson Junior High, described the type of chess the students played as Swiss tournament. Players enter all four rounds of the game, each lasting up to 45 minutes, so that every child can participate in the entire tournament.
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Very cool.