I’m looking to find the HS State Champions of Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri. Is there a centralized location that I could go to that would have these, or where should I look?
Alex Relyea
You mean the current HS champion or a list of champions over time?
In several if not most cases, the current champ is from the previous school year and may have graduated last spring.
We have talked about it but don’t have a central database of state champions and other ‘Hall of Records’ information yet, though I think that’s an excellent idea. (One question is who’d maintain that list and how, not all of the state chapters have even registered for access to the TD/Affiliate Support Area yet. I suppose we could wait until all 52 states have put this information up on their own web pages.)
Probably the best that we have at this time is the list from the yearbook issue of Chess Life in April, which is at: uschess.org/CL_2006_Yearbook.pdf
If that doesn’t have what you’re looking for, contact Jerry Nash in the office.
When you say “HS State Champion” are you intending the player who won the state affiliate’s High School Championship tournament? If so, would looking at the list of participants in the Denker not provide the information you need? I guess the Denker participant is not necessarily the High School Champion, but in most cases it probably is. At least the way I understand it, a state’s “High School Champion” is that state’s Denker participant unless they decline. But maybe you’re after the true “High School Champion”, regardless of who ended up participating in the Denker.
Or are you really looking for the highest rated high school player in each of those states? That may or may not be the state’s “High School Champion”. And a state’s highest rated high school player may not even be the highest rated school-age player.
Hmm, the 2007 “High School Champion” of Northern California was certainly not the Denker representative–or even eligible to play in the Denker! He was a 2100 rated 5th grader who finished clear first in a field of two masters and eight players rated over 2000. I guess that further muddies the issue.
Michael Aigner
The answer to Alex’s original question is that a) there is no centralized list, and b) preparing one would be a massive task because different states have different methods and standards. State Chapters are asked to send a list of state champions to Chess Life each year for the Yearbook. Some do, some of them include a High School champion, and those can be found at uschess.org/CL_2006_Yearbook.pdf. For the rest, you’ll have to them individually from the state chapters.