State

Saturday was the ND State Scholastic Chess Tournament. Due to all of the flooding going on, there weren't very many players there this year; but most of the kids that were there were very good. The Jr. High division (7-9th grade) only had 15-20 kids. I think the Oak Grove team made up about half the attendance! :-) There were only four rounds this year, as opposed to the five they usually have. OG's team didn't play their best game that day, but they still ended up taking first place as a team, for the fourth year in a row! Way to go guys!

The Sr. High division only had nine players, and it was an intense battle between Oak Grove and Fargo South, each of whom had four players on their respective teams. OG didn't really expect to beat FS, as their team had three very strong players. However, we played better than we expected, and ended up losing to them by only one point! So we took second, which was fine by me because we finally got to bring home some hardware! In previous years, we had just missed earning the trophies by a couple points. I had a fairly easy first round, but the three that followed were intense. I ended the day at 2-2, and ended up winning the five-way tie-break for third. I was happy with that, because after four years, I finally placed! In my senior year, no less!

We had a fantastic time playing chess and goofing around with all our friends, but I want to stop and say "All the glory to God." He's the one who gave us the ability to play, and He alone deserves praise and honor!