ICA 20th Anniversary Teaneck Scholastic Summer Camp Week 2: Welcome, Welcome, NM Welcome!

 

Last Week tonight with John Oliver aside, we were pleased to have National Master Chris Welcome join us as one of the counselors this week.

NM Welcome provided the students an opportunity to play a simul against a National Master and in the end crowned Lily Del Pilar for giving the best account of herself during the event (according to Chris everybody else simply blundered while Lily kept it together for the entire contest).

We had three tournament groups this week. Kovi Pahmer won section one when he came from behind against Lily in the second to last round as she blundered a rook while up three pawns. Eliot Lee won the tournament in section two on the last day as the leader Kevin Wei lost his game to Danny Paley.  Jack “running man” Heo defeated everyone in section three to win there.

The best students were Kovi Pahmer in Slava’s group (the tasked assignment was to memorize the eighth game of the 2012 world championship match between Anand and Gelfand that ended in just 17 moves).  Michael Haskell was the best in Justin’s group, while Eliot Lee was the winner for Ivette, and Benjamin Sandler the winner in NM Chris Welcome’s group.

On Tuesday we also had a rainy day blitz tournament in two groups and Danny “Quik” Paley lived up to his nicknamen as he won in the younger section, while Jakob Landa won in the older group.

The problem solving winner was Dylan Chung.

For sports groups Eliot Lee was the winner in the oldest group, while Benjamin Sandler was the winner in the second group, and Kevin Wei won in the youngest group.

The big dodgeball event was won by Eliot Lee as well (Eliot only got one prize for sports and dodgeball as otherwise it is prize overkill).

We also awarded prizes for Origami making with Sonia and two Landa brothers Ezra, and Elan won for that according to the coach.

The Friday blitz-bughouse was won by the team that dubbed themselves the “People” as Kovi Pahmer, and Osei Brazil teamed up to take gold there.

Lastly, but certainly not leastly, all the coaches judged an “improv art contest” where the kids were given five minutes at a time to draw four individual topics (1. Favorite animal as a favorite chess piece, 2. Watching your favorite tv show or listening to your favorite music, 3. While smelling your favorite smell. 4. Making the picture as funny as possible.).  In the end though there were many worthy drawings Alec Wei’s pig/knight won (probably on the strength of the fact that the chair it was sitting on had a randomly hilarious little tag that said “Bob’s furniture”. Nice touch Alec!).

 

See you all in week 3!