By KAYLA J. MARSH
Staff Writer
MIDDLETOWN — Christian Brothers Academy (CBA) is the king of chess among scholastic teams across the country.
CBA made program history when it captured the national championship during the National High School Chess Championships, which were held April 1-3 in Atlanta, Ga.
The national title was the first for the CBA chess team, which has focused on achieving this feat for years.
“For years now, we have been getting very close, and it has been our goal all season to try to get a national championship, and we finally did it,” head coach Patrick Melosh said. “This is truly the culmination of the season for us.”
According to Melosh, the championship team of sophomore Daniel Draganoff and seniors Chris Giordano, Chris Wall, Luke Drennan and Daniel Giammanco, won the U1900 Section, combining to score 20 points in seven rounds of play.
“There are seven rounds over the three-day championship, and in each round, each person in the game has two hours … so most of the games were lasting around four hours, so they logged about 28 hours of playing time over the course of the championship,” Melosh said.
Individually, Draganoff finished in a tie for second, winning six of his seven matches, and Giordano and Wall both finished in a tie for ninth place, each winning five of their seven matches.
“They’ve been working very hard [and] I am very impressed at the amount of effort and work they do put in,” Melosh said.
In addition to the national championship team, Melosh said there were a number of other team and individual accomplishments.
Sophomores Marc Sorrentino, Brendan Fitzgerald, John-Gabriel Bermudez and junior Tyler Gentile, came in fifth place in the U1600 Section with Sorrentino winning five of his seven matches and tying for 16th place.
Juniors Nick Karris and Colin Clarke, sophomores Andrew Dalton and Michael Gilbride, and freshman Kevin Cisneros came in 13th place for the U1200 Section.
“I’ve been coaching the team for about 19 years now, and they started with one kid and we’ve expanded to where each year we have probably around 25 or more students on the chess team,” Melosh said.
“As time has gone along we have been improving, and I have learned a lot.”
He said the team practices twice a week and participates in a number of local, state, national and other tournaments throughout the year.
The team placed 14th overall in the National Blitz Tournament, being led by Giammanco with eight points.
Freshman Luke Rogers placed third in the country in the U800 Section, winning six of his seven matches.
Melosh said the 2015-16 team season has also included first-place showings at the New Jersey Grade Championships, the 46th Annual National Chess Congress Tournament in Philadelphia, the New York City Championships and a second-place showing at the United States Chess Federation’s National K-12 Grade Championships in Orlando.
“Most of the teams across the country, the kids are taught chess at a very early age and have been playing and competing since they were young, and our kids, I get them as ninth graders and I try to recruit them to try to play chess, and they do what others have been doing for years and years and do it in a short period of time,” Melosh said.
“It is very tiring mentally and physically … especially in competitions like these where they are stressing and playing all day long.
“When you have experienced it or seen it you appreciate the effort that fully goes into it, and it is a lot of effort on their part and it teaches them how to sit and focus for long periods of time, and that is one of the big benefits, especially in today’s quick world.”
Melosh said the road to the national title was a collaborative one and achieved only through group effort.
“What works really well is that the kids with more knowledge do try to help the others out and get better, and it is a collaborative effort,” he said. “What we have always emphasized is that we like to think of it more as about what the team accomplishes, not what the individual accomplishes.
“I do have an assistant, Brian Meinders, and he has been with me for the last seven years, and our program has really gotten better and better … and he is the one that really imparts a great deal of the more sophisticated chess knowledge … and we work very well together, and he is very good at what he does.
“Some people consider chess a sport, other don’t, but these kids put so much effort, if not more, in than a lot of the athletes, and it is a thing that is very time-consuming for them, and it is nice to get that national title.”
Located in Lincroft, CBA is a private, Catholic, academic preparatory school for boys.
Visit www.CBALincroftNJ.org.
