White Knoll Scholastic Open

I ran my first Scholastic tournament this past weekend at White Knoll High School. One of our club members is a teacher there, has started a chess club and asked if I'd help him hold his first tournament which I did. I had hoped to get maybe 20 players for it and was pleasantly surprised when we wound up with 30 and a good distribution through all three sections. The playing hall was the cafeteria that has an elevated stage where we put the top 2 boards of each section which put the top players "above the rest". Three of Cola Chess's Jr players participated all doing very well taking first in the Middle School section and tying for third and also taking first in the Elementary section. This was a warm up for the state scholastics this weekend here in Columbia. I only had to deal with one insane parent which ended ok, I was right of course! The only negative was the $376 tab that had to be picked to have a janitor sit on his ass all day while we ran the tournament. God forbid a public school support something that might encourage independent thinking. Overall for my first scholastic tournament it went better than I expected and shows there is a demand for chess in this state.