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Broken Streak, "Failure" at State, 2nd -- or First? -- at Nationals

A "Failure" at State -- Breaking the Streak

All good things must end.  Going into the 1998 state championship, Franklin had won 22 consecutive tournaments in the midwest -- but we were very concerned about our team being able to take first.  The Franklin 6-8 grade team had -- at tournaments during the year -- been composed of six players in 6th grade, one in 5th grade, and one in 8th grade.  The 5th grader, Daniel Leung, would play in -- and win -- the 4-5 section at state.  Since Daniel is currently our strongest player, this would make it difficult for our team to have its top performance.  The combination of this with an overwhelmingly young team against an experienced opponent would be difficult.

After the first day, the team was tied for first, having consistently defeated lower rated players.  The real contest would come in round 5, however, where we lost decisively to the Eisenhower team.  Overall, in 5 encounters, we were able to score only 1 point against Eisenhower.  This result would speel the finish of our winning streak. Franklin finishd in a tie for 2nd-3rd in this event.

The Franklin streak would end in Rockford.  A new streak -- if there is one -- will belong to Emerson Middle School.  Emerson, a new 6-8 grade school in Park Ridge, will be the new home of all of the former Franklin players.

Nationals 1998

The Franklin K-6 team made a strong showing at Nationals.  After falling behind The Shelby School early, we slowly caught up and pulled within a half point going into round 7.  In our indvidual encounters against them we had scored 1.5 out of 2, and we had one head-to-head enocunter going into the last round.  In this game, Mark Rokita convincingly downed Wellington Cassuto with a nice Rook sacrifice against his Pirc defense.

This turned out to not be not quite enough, however.  We still managed to finish in second place, with 21 points, second to the 22.5 scored by The Shelby School, and far ahead of third place Hunter College who finished with 18 points.

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Last modified: November 20, 2010