The College was pleased to host the Chess State Finals at the Penquite Campus recently for both Primary and Secondary Divisons. With over 300 players, it was the largest tournament in Tasmania for quite some time.

Primary

Five students from the Junior school were selected to compete.

Over the course of the day students had to play nine games of chess against students from across the state. Year 5 students Ethan Wagner and Alex Chong, and Year 4 students Zachary Lim, Charles Clifton and Jason Wu used all the strategies at their disposal to win 21 points, landing the Scotch Oakburn Junior team in fifth place from 32 primary schools. A fantastic achievement and reflective of their commitment to the game.

Riley Jones
Teacher

Secondary

 

Our Secondary  players took a while to get into the rhythm and match the level of intensity of the opposition, and they fared better as the competition progressed.

The team of: Bosco Kong (Year 7), Henry Chilcott (Year 8), Maddi Gofton (Year 8), Shiv Kataria (Year 9), Matias Munoz Lagos (Year 11) Himash Keerthiratne (Year 11) and Oscar Mann (Year 11) finished a comendable seventh.

Himash finished second individually, for the second time in a row. He was undefeated, but had three draws, whereas the overall winner only had two draws. Matias also did very well with six wins out of nine matches, while Bosco had five wins and Shiv four and a half.

Himash’s second placeing concludes a very successful year for him. He won the three Interschool tournaments in the North, the Under 18 Tasmanian Junior Rapid Chess Champion 2025 title, and the Under 18 Tasmanian Junior Classical Chess Champion 2025 title. A great individual achievement.

Thank you to all who helped making this event such a success.

Fabrice Dauchez
Person-in-Charge of Chess