Barrington High Chess Team Takes 2nd in State, 12th at Nationals

The Barrington High School chess team came in 2nd out of 128 teams at IHSA State Chess Championships, held in Peoria Il on February 8th and 9th 2019. They played a grueling 7 matches winning 6 but losing the final match to Whitney Young, a magnet school in Chicago. They have been undefeated all season through Conference and Sectionals. This is the first year that BHS has ever taken home a trophy from the State Championship awarded to the top 3 teams! The team went onto Nationals to win 12th place out of 117 teams competing on March 15th, 16th and 17th 2019.

Most of the students are products of the Barrington Chess program. The Barrington Chess program evolved into Chess Without Borders when Grandmaster Yury Shulman joined the founder Rishi Sethi in 2006. The chess program was created in 1999 as a grassroots organization at Grove Avenue Elementary School and supported enthusiastically by Community Unit School District 220. It has excelled in its other mission of combining service and philanthropy with learning.

Photo of the team pictured from left to right.

Front Row: Jacob Devadas, Jack Bradley, Omkar Prabhavalkar, Ethan Gagliano, Shreyas Reddy, Rishi Narayanan, Shreya Mangalam.
Back Row: Prathik Kandimalla, Nicholas Edels, Vineeth Rao, Asst. Coach Jim Hawrysko
Picture taken by: Coach Jeff Doles

The program is a testament to what transpires when educators hold high expectations of their students. Through all these years the community has wholeheartedly supported innovative projects led by youth in the area. Their projects created under the umbrella of Chess Without Borders resulted in donations of almost $170,000 to local and global charities.

Although the program has won many awards and honors for its work, the highest achievement remains its ability to drive youth to create humanitarian projects that make a difference in the world. From long term projects where they are supporting a disfigured child to receive education to establishing a computer center in the slums of India to short term projects benefitting local communities, youth have gone beyond their potential. Visit: History of Chess in Barrington

It is important to reflect on the role a school and its educators can exercise in encouraging entrepreneurship beginning in childhood. Youth begin to appreciate early how learning through disappointments, trial and error are essential to achievement as long as they have the support of their mentors. By allowing innovative programs to thrive District 220 has raised confidant youth who were introduced to a diverse range of social, economic and intellectual interests through social entrepreneurship. For details of service projects visit: Affecting Lives through Service

Chess Without Borders invites all individuals to join us as volunteers, chess players or as philanthropists on Feb 23rd at the Grove Avenue Chess Tournament.