Fourteen students braved below zero temperatures to decide who would take home hardware and free entry to the 3rd Annual Okoboji Open in April.
Half of the participants (7) came from Sibley, Spirit Lake/Okoboji had three local players, and the remaining 4 students came from as far away as Mountain Lake, MN.
The winner of 1st place trophy in the Middle/High School section was Leticia Flores (Sibley), with Hunter Dahna (Mt. Lake) and Christopher Welp (Mt. Lake), respectively taking the 2nd and 3rd place medals.
The 1st place trophy in the Elementary Section went to Jareya Harder (Mountain Lake), who had the only perfect score of the tourney at 5-0. Hailey Cavin (Sibley) and Alden Taylor (Spirit Lake) garnered the 2nd and 3rd place medals respectively.
Due to turnout numbers, sections were combined and modified. Accordingly, Mountain Lake won the Middle/High School team trophy while Sibley's Ben Franklin Elementary took the trophy in the lower grades.
I would like to thank Jodene Kruse (Sibley) for organizing the event and Dr. Steve Harder (Mountain Lake) for assisting me (Sibley) in directing. We also appreciate Arrowwood Resort and Conference Center for hosting us. We thank Crown Trophy, McDonalds and all our other sponsors for supporting this event.
Sam Smith, President, and Kevein Hlavac, Vice-President, of Southwest Minnesota Chess also stopped by to say hello and announce they would be making a contribution to sponsor the Okoboji Open.
I mention this to underscore our mission of supporting each other's events to help build chess in the region. Speaking of which, Southwest/West Central has a tournament at Marshall, MN on February 7th and Mountain Lake has theirs on March 7th. SCSC, SW/WC's sister organization, also has a Chess Up for State on Feb. 21 at Belle Plaine, MN. I encourage you to register your students in these scholastic events.
Thank you all for everything you do to promote chess. I ask you consider registering as a member of the Sibley Chess Club website to help further expand our efforts.
I will post pictures of this event in our gallery section once they are available.
