Goa bags silver, finishes second

Panaji: The Goa U-14 chess team won a silver medal and finished second at 65th National School Championship held at Dadra & Nagar Haveli and organised by Directorate of Sports & Youth Affairs Silvasa recently.

Goa team consisted of Captain Reuben Colaco, Sairaj Vernekar, Paarth Salvi, Saksham Natekar and Atharv Sawant Dessai. Goa was seeded 8 out of 28 teams from all over India .

Reuben colaco and Sairaj Vernekar won Gold Medal for the best player of 1st & 2nd board and on 3rd board Paarth Salvi won Bronze medal prize.

Goa beat Chattisgarh  4-0 and went on to beat Puducherry  3.5-0.5 in the second round. Goa then beat Andra Pradesh 3-1 but lost Gujarat 1.5 – 2.5 . Fortunately Goa came back   strongly to  beat second seed CISCE 3-1  and in the final round outplayed Navodaya Schools by 3-1 to win the silver.

Maharashtra won the championship and the Kendriya Vidyalaya won the Bronze.

Sanjay Kavlekar accompanied the team as manager.