While the Niles North chess team isn’t as strong as ever (thanks Eric Rosen), they are definitely here to play. Having lost only two seniors last year, they didn’t need a significant rebuild, and having gained tons of new freshmen, the team is always growing.

On Saturday, October 11, Niles North hosted the first tournament of the year – the North Suburban Chess League (NSCL) Opener. There were four “octagons” and an open section. Octagon A was made up of the top eight players in the league, Octagon B the next best eight, and so on until Octagon D. The open section contained over 45 players.

Competition in the NSCL is tough. Evanston and Stevenson are some of the best teams in the state and Highland Park has a player rated over 2000 on their team, but Niles North still came out with some wins.

Senior Sohail Amin took first place in Octagon C and junior Bill Kim took first place in Octagon D. Senior Nahiyan Chowdhury won second place in the open section. For it being the freshmen’s first tournament ever, they didn’t perform too badly either. Eric Helgemo won three out of his five games, J.C. Osorio won two, Naseer Azam won 1.5, and Will Groner won one.

“I’m not upset that I only won one of my games,” Groner said. “It’s only my first time and I’m sure I can always get better.”

The team then headed to their first one-on-one match of the season on Friday, October 24 against Niles West. Our top eight players played their top eight players and completely swept, winning every single game. The final score was 68 – 0.

“Now that I’m playing a much higher board than I was last year, the games are getting pretty tough and analysis-intensive,” junior Eric Musielski said. “But the fact that I’m winning them shows me that I deserve to be up there.”

On Saturday, October 25, the team competed at the 2014 Knights of the Square Table tournament held at Bloom High School in Chicago Heights. Missing all of the seniors but one due to the ACT, the team was missing some of their best players. However, they still pulled off the huge victory of winning first place team overall. The top five scores contributing to this win belonged to junior Bill Kim, sophomore Jiedong Duan, sophomore Manduul Tsetsegmaa, junior Eric Musielski, and senior Hannah Bader.

Individually, Kim took home two trophies, one for winning his section and one for going undefeated. Bader also took home two trophies, one for winning her section and one for winning the biggest upset award, which goes to the player who beat someone with the biggest difference in rating points between them. She won against an opponent rated 600 points higher than her.

The tournament has a rule that one player can’t take home more than two trophies, and since both Kim and Bader had already won their two trophies, their third had to go to the second place winner of it. Kim technically won best junior and Bader technically won best female.

“It feels really good to be at the top,” Kim said. “Now hopefully I can stay here.”

“I am really proud of my team,” assistant coach Rafeh Qazi said. “They really pushed, even through their losses, and kept their heads up. Through persistence and extreme awesomeness, we clinched the first place!”

The team’s next tournament will take place on Saturday, November 1 at Evanston Township High School. To keep up with their schedule and results, check back at either nscl.info or theICCA.

“This is going to be a really great year,” head coach Harry Kyriazes said. “I can feel it.”