Special to the Bulverde News

Students from Specht Ele-mentary, Arlon Seay Inter-mediate and Spring Branch Middle schools competed Jan. 5 in a local area scholastic chess tournament at the Guad-alupe Community Center in San Antonio. 

In the elementary school section, Joey Cevallos and Angelo Badiola from Specht Elementary School and Carl Swatzell, Taylor Lathrop, Dalton Reid, Zackary Rogers, Sean Dooley and Gus Grusendorf from Arlon Seay Intermediate School competed together on the same team.  Swatzell, Lathrop and Cevallos, who had played in tournaments before, each earned three wins in five games to solidify their team’s second place finish. 

“This was our team’s first tournament of the school year” said coach Mark Abolafia-Rosenzweig. “Trying to ready ourselves for a much larger regional tournament in Aus-tin on Feb. 23, it was important to get some competition in to see where we stand.  We discovered some things we need to work on but also found we are doing many things right. All these kids should be very proud of their first showing of the year – particularly those for whom this was their first ever chess tournament.”

Charlie and Joey Cevallos competed in the middle school section, where Charlie took third place individual honors.

Ronnie Abolafia-Rosenz-weig, Wyatt Whitaker, Michael Keeton, Aaron Jahns, Taylor Lathrop and Jake Renteria competed in the high school section. The middle school team took first place.Abolafia-Rosenzweig anchored the team with four wins and earned the third place trophy. Whitaker, Keeton and Jahns had three wins each, earning individual fourth, fifth, and sixth place honors respec-tively.