Lower School Students Place at Chess Tournament

February 14, 2012

On Saturday, February 4, 2012, nine students from Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based The Roeper School (Roeper), a co-educational day school for gifted children, were awarded honors at the Michigan State Scholastic Team Championship Chess Tournament. Roeper Interim Head of School Phillip Deely made the announcement.

Held at Michigan State University by the Michigan Scholastic Chess section of the Michigan Chess Association, the tournament was open to students in grades K-8 and awarded medals to the teams and individual competitors that reached the highest possible point levels.

This is the second consecutive year that Coach Diallo Smith, of Detroit, has lead the Roeper chess team to this event. This year, the school had four teams attend, an increase over the one team from Roeper that attended last year. Roeper students achieved great success at the tournament, with teams placing at both 8th (Reserve) and 6th (Championship) in the K-5 division. Roeper also had a team place 10th in the K-3 Championship Category for the state.

In addition to the teams placing, the following Roeper students received medals for individual achievement:

Gold medal (5 out of 5 points):
· Asher Moskowitz (Bloomfield)

Silver medals (4 out of 5 points):
· Blake Bottesi (West Bloomfield)
· Nathan Moskowitz (Bloomfield)
· Kayden Pierre (Auburn Hills)
· Ben Stafeil (Huntington Woods)
· Dylan Stafeil (Huntington Woods)
· Sam Weiss (Royal Oak)

Bronze medals (3.5 out of 5 points):
· Josiah Smith (Detroit)
· Calvin Watry (Oxford)

“It’s great to receive accolades for Roeper’s chess team’s success, but that credit truly belongs to the students that competed in the tournament, “ stated Smith. “Our students practice chess together one day, a week for 1.5 hours, and were competing against some teams that have school-sponsored practices every day. The fact that our students did such an amazing job is a testament to the exceptional kids that attend Roeper. It is because of the students’ hard work, determination, practice, focus and game play that the Roeper team placed so well at the tournament.”

Founded in 1941, The Roeper School is a uniquely personalized, co-educational school for gifted and talented children in preschool through grade 12 from more than 60 communities in southeast Michigan. With campuses in Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills, Mich., Roeper was conceived on founding principles that recognize the power of education, choice and self-expression, and the transformative impact these principles have on young minds.