Bellevue elementary students win big in national chess tourney

For the fourth year in a row, students at Stevenson Elementary School in Bellevue took home a batch of trophies from the Super Nationals IV Chess Championship in Nashville, Tenn., including top honors in the elementary division.

Stevenson won the national team title in the K-5 championship section.

The school also took first place in the K-5 U900 section, sixth place in K-6 U1000 section, and eighth place in the K-3 U800 section.

The team score is computed based on the top four individual scores.

Student Jiayi Hu won individual 25th place, and Amith Vanmane won individual 30th place. Mayhul Arora took a first place for ratings 1000 to 1199. The other team winners are Daniel Hua and Grace Sun.

Stevenson students also have been involved in a long-running virtual chess match with astronaut Gregory Chamitoff, who made many of his chess moves while he was stationed on the international space station last year. During the chess tournament in Nashville, students got to meet Chamitoff — now back on Earth — in person. The game is still being played and can be tracked online at http://main.uschess.org/content/blogcategory/198/475/.

Katherine Long: 206-464-2219 or klong@seattletimes.com