There were 1133 players from 125 high schools. The last two World Amateur Team tournaments had 1131 and 1177 players.
Whitney Young went 7-0 to take first among 135 teams (1233 players). They were 8-board teams with two teams forfeiting boards 7&8 and 7 teams forfeiting board 8. There were a lot of alternates (155 of them).
ihsa.org/SportsActivities/Ch … tables.htm
Fantastic! Was it held in the Chicago area?
Oh no, it could not be in the second best place in the state.
It was in Peoria, yea!!!
Whitney Young’s seven wins in seven matches included wins over three of the five 6-1 teams, three of the 24 teams that went 5-2 and their first round opponent was one of the 36 teams that went 4-3.
The Richards team (anchored by a senior girl that went 5-2 on first board and a team mentioned a few months back when they fielded an all-girl team at the West Chicago event that ended up outscoring their all-boy team) also went 5-2 and was 16th on tie-breaks out of the 135 teams.
The first day of the 2014 event is finished and so far 1229 players have participated. There are 138 teams of 8 boards each. With various substitutions there have been an additional 15 board sixes, 38 board sevens and 62 board eights, but the tournament is not over yet.
ihsa.org/SportsActivities/Ch … tables.htm
There is a 7-way tie for first (at 4-0) with three rounds to go. The teams seeded 1 through 7 are involved in that tie, so it looks like the seeding committee did a good job determining who the top teams were. The next 16 teams are part of the 32-way tie for 8th.
Edit 5 rounds done, 1242 players so far, the only three 5-0 teams are Whitney Young, University High and Hinsdale Central. There is a 20-way tie for 4th at 4-1. The 23 teams at 5-0 and 4-1 have 22 of the top 23 seeds.
Edit 6 rounds done, 1250 players so far. 6-0 teams Whitney Young and Hinsdale Central face off for the title. 11 teams at 5-1. Ten of those 13 teams were seeded in the top 13.
Edit Whitney Young goes 7-0 to repeat as state champions.
6-1 teams are Benet, Hinsdale Central, University High of Urbana, Chicago Northside College Prep, Evanston, Stevenson and Niles North.
1258 players.
The 2015 tournament had 146 teams (an eight board fixed-board team tournament where 6 teams had only seven boards and 2 had only six boards) and 1351 players (193 alternates). Naperville North won with a 7-0 score and a final round win over 6-1 Stevenson. The other 6-1 teams were New Trier (lost to Stevenson), Hinsdale Central (lost to New Trier), Evanston (lost to Stevenson), Glenbrook South (lost to Naperville North) and Neuqua Valley (lost to Benet Academy, which lost to Naperville North and Glenbrook South).
There was a single 7-0 player on boards 1, 4, 5, 7 and 8, two 7-0 players on board 3 and four 7-0 players on board 6. Board two was led by three 6.5-0.5 players, two of whom drew each other.
Seven of the top nine seeds went 6-1 or 7-0. The other two of the top nine seeds (Niles North and Benet) had the best two tie-breaks amongst the 5-2 teams.
Cool side story:
Is the IHSA team tournament USCF rated? Will it be reported on in a major article in Chess Life like the USAT’s?
Q1)
No. There have been portions of a number of threads that cover why the state high school association that governs all type of competitions (chess, football, basketball, debate, bass fishing, etc.) will not require USCF membership for a player to represent the school the player goes to.
Q2)
Probably not.
I knew the answers to the questions. Just wanted to have the answers stated. Good for Peoria. At least they made some money from the event. Probably generate a lot of local news coverage. Good for the kids. Nothing to see here for the USCF. The IHSA directly benefits from the skills of the USCF TDs involved, and the rules environment that a national governing body of chess creates, and the existence of a parallel rating system that is similar to ours to make sure that the players/teams are properly seeded. What does the USCF get? Zip. Like most state sports associations, I bet that the IHSA administrators are paid quite well and that their expenses are covered to the penny, while they benefit from the work and talent of the many volunteers, some USCF, who do all of the grunt work. Nice monopoly the 900 pound gorilla has. It not only protects its bananas, it makes sure no one else can have a banana. Just an observation of what the USCF is stuck with. Nothing here to see for the USCF. Move along. Move along.
So help the new guy understand. Isn’t there a way to increase the entry/participation fee for the event in an amount equal to the costs of USCF memberships and then to give the memberships to participants? We certainly have a free rider problem in that various groups take advantage of the benefits the USCF offers but don’t want to bear any of the costs of receive all of the benefits. I know the ILSA prohibits requiring participants to join another federation (like the USCF) but it seems like there should be some type of creative solution. Still, I gather that people smarter than I have thought about creative solutions and have concluded that nothing works. Correct?
Since it is a state championship organized by the state high school association, there is no entry fee. You just have to play enough qualifying events to be allowed to participate. A common entry fee for a qualifying tournament is about $8 per player if it is not a conference championship (with strong resistance against going any higher). Qualifying matches have no entry fee.
Jeff, when I last participated in this event (2007) the above statements weren’t quite accurate - perhaps its changed for today.
Membership in the IHSA is by school - that is schools are members, not students. Hence, no additional membership is required or permitted to be required.
As I recall from when I was participating, there is an entry fee. It is paid by the school, directly from the school office, as part of the school participating in an IHSA state championship. I believe (but don’t know for certain) that the process of confirming the roster online generates the invoice to the school. Schools don’t normally budget for other events. I don’t recall the amount of the EF (I’m thinking $80 when I last participated, but I am really very uncertain about this.) Thus, even if we could include USCF membership (politically unlikely) it would more than double the cost. I believe there is an issue with the perception of taking tax dollars and sending them to an organization for a membership for the student.
One of the things I’ve proposed is developing a new type of USCF service. For example, USCF could offer a service to IHSA (and other state associations) to rate the games of their players, use USCF rules, training, etc… The cost of this would be a $5 per player registration fee and a per game fee (TBD.) This would not be a membership fee, and players would not be able to play in any event other than events submitted through the state association affiliate (or some such similar arrangement.) Perhaps for internal processing, we would use a different membership type, or perhaps a different ID. The database for viewing the ratings might also have to be restricted in some fashion.
However, in addition, we would provide each participant an opportunity to receive a one-time USCF tournament membership good for up to five games. We could experiment with different methods of delivery - perhaps the player would need to enter their info online to receive it. Perhaps the coach could enter the info and the player or parent would receive an email requesting their confirmation to receive it. We would need to come up with a process that benefits USCF and the player and the coach and the parent, and also protects all involved.
We would then have someone to market to with respect to USCF.
(As an aside, I think our member database should have info for parents, (name, email, addresses, etc.) and coaches (same sort of info) and that the player/parent can confirm the coach or disengage from the coach. Coaches would have to be USCF members, perhaps have CCC, etc.
There are many things we could do if we got synergistic about our services.
Given the privacy rules that exist, it may be difficult to create the type of synergies of information between schools, various associations, and the USCF. When our school sent kids to a team tournament, the only information that the school would certify was the student’s name. Other address information, birthday info, or other data that might have been useful for tracking purposes was considered verboten to give out to others. We had to operate within the guidelines of the school district. Parents had to sign release forms. The best we could do was give the TD a list of names, USCF ID#'s, and membership expiration dates. It would not have been possible for the tournament organizers or other coaches to determine whether we had a group of “ringers”, a superteam, or even if all of the players came from one particular school from the information we were allowed to provide. We were lucky that the school would even allow its name to be attached to what it considered a non-curricular activity.
Member schools no longer pay a fee to belong to the IHSA. Membership fees were dropped a number of years ago.
There is no entry fee for the school to make a timely entry of a team into any IHSA sport or activity. There is a late fee of $100 for all sport and activities for registration after the posted deadline and there are prescribed fees that vary depending on the sport or activity for withdrawing from competition after the deadline for withdrawals have passed.
The IHSA has a rule that prohibits any member school or sponsored event from requiring membership in any other organization to participate.
The IHSA has competition in 14 boys sports, 15 girls sports, 8 activities, 3 special coed activities, and 2 emerging sports. Activities are all coed.
Does not having the tournament USCF rate take away from the event?
At the IHSA state team chess championship the floor TDs are paid $20 per round (7 rounds is $140) and have their lunch, dinner and hotel room covered. There is generally one floor TD per 12-16 teams (9 to 12 for the 146 teams would be normal with about 1168 players each round). The back room TDs and chief TD are also paid. After figuring in hotel and food, I would not be surprised to hear that the total TD costs were north of $2500. I don’t know the site cost or the trohpy costs. The entry fees may have been as little as $zero. One organizer was surprised that a trophy tournament with over 1000 players could lose money, but it is understandable when you learn how the organizing association designs things.
How does IHSA generate revenue?
The IHSA constitution still includes that member school dues and event/activity fees can be charged as determined by the IHSA Board.
No idea how they generate revenue. The specific rules for the IHSA state chess championship said that there was no fee for an on-time entry and a $100 fee was charged for a late entry or a late withdrawal.