The first ever Somerset Junior School Championships took place recently with 86 players taking part filing into the Ray Dining Hall to compete. It was a fun filled day with fierce competition across the boards and one thing that was very apparent from the event, is how promising the crop of younger students is currently.

The tournament also doubled as the primary Inter-House competition which was won by Veivers.

Prize Winners

  • 1st – Calen Tang 7/7 (pictured)
  • 2nd – Harrison Qu 6/7
  • 3rd – Alessandro Martinese 5.5/7
  • 1st Girl – Annika Lim 5.5/7
  • Year 6 – Oscar Credland-Ballantyne 5.5/7
  • Year 5 – Hayden Li 5/7
  • Year 4 – Zhander Griffiths 5/7
  • Year 3 – Arthur Chou 5.5/7
  • Year 2 – Dylan Hu 5.5/7
  • Year 1 – Paul Sang Yum 3.5/7


Many of the above players take part in the Friday afternoon (3.30pm to 5.30pm) weekly competitions which is fast becoming the place to be for improving players. If your child wants to have the best chance of improvement, taking part in regular competition as well as lessons is very important. The weekly club is open to all Year 1 to 12 students. Contact Andrew for more information.

Last Wednesday, 16 Somerset secondary students headed to The Southport School to play in Round 2 of the Gold Coast Secondary finals. With a new record attendance at the event of 218 students (first time ever over 200!), there were multiple divisions and many challenging games across the day.

In the Premier division, Somerset 1 (Byron Morris, Kenny Ming, Eason Wang, Jason Li) went in as favourites by rating, but the tournament was never going to be that simple. When the final standings were presented, there was a three-way tie for first position, with the Somerset 1 team managing to claim victory on count-back ahead of TSS and King's Christian College.

The Somerset 2 team of Charlie Liu, Lyanna Chan, Jared Consiglio-Cockle and Aaron Lim performed very well on the day to finish in fourth position, not far off the top three.

Individually, Byron Morris was awarded a second place medal, whilst Charlie Liu and Eason Wang received Merit ribbons for their efforts.

In the A Division, Somerset fielded two teams, with Somerset 4 (Kevin Bao, Lachlan Hartley, Zayya George, Ishaan Baswal) upstaging a number of teams to claim a third place finish. Individually, Kevin Bao finished = first but unfortunately finished out of the placings on count-back. Kevin, Aadi Rai, and Zayya George claimed Merit Ribbons, whilst Debbie Kuo did the same in the B Division.

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