1/13/2023
Timothy Chapman
Photo Courtesy:Lauren Tovias / UTRGV Chess
The UTRGV Chess Team will be competing at the Presidents Cup Championship for the fifth time after the A and B teams placed third and fourth place respectively in the past Pan American Intercollegiate team championships, on Jan. 5-8.
Due to the rules of advancing into the Presidents Cup, no university can have more than one team competing in the final four which drops the UTRGV B Team out of the competition.
UTRGV Chess Team A was composed of International Masters Viktor Gazik, Jaraj Druska, Dante Beukes, Irakli Beradze and Grandmaster Kamil Dragun. Team B was composed of International Masters Tianqi Wang, Tamas Petenyi, Victor Rodriguez Garcia and Ekin Baris Ozenir, and FIDE Master Jakub Fus.
UTRGV Chess Coach and Grandmaster Bartek Macieja said that he knows the other universities see UTRGV as underdogs, but that does not break the focus of the teams due to their past success in the Presidents Cup. Finishing second in 2016, the UTRGV Team later won three consecutive years from 2019 through 2021.
“Our students are focused. They really want to succeed in that event [Presidents Cup], I think that is the key to our successes. It’s not enough to be a superstar, you also need to show it during the event, to stay motivated,” Macieja said.
A lot of the chess team’s success is due to A team player Kamil Dragun, ever since he first joined, according to Coach Macieja.
“When Kamil arrived to UTRGV in 2017, since then we had played three times and we won all three times. UTRGV had never won in the past history. Kamil is the leader of the team, so we are obliged to him for coming to Brownsville and choosing UTRGV and representing our university so well at the championship and leading the team,” Macieja said.
Since the Texas Collegiate Super Finals back in Oct., Grandmaster Kamil Dragun made sure that going into the Pan American Intercollegiate Championships he prepared a week before the tournament in order to prevent any mistakes like last time.
“On the last tournament when everything that could go wrong went wrong, in this tournament everything basically was going our way from the very beginning,” Dragun said.
Because of previous appearances, his graduating UTRGV and the probability of this being his final tournament, Dragun said he feels no nerves heading to the Presidents Cup.
“I’m actually pretty relaxed because we’ve already won this championship event. This will probably be my last university tournament, so I have nothing to lose,” Dragun said.
FIDE Master Jakub Fus said he had no time to mentally prepare himself for his matches, but he approached each one with the same determination he always does.
“For me it was kind of difficult to feel real pressure because I came back straight from Poland to Seattle, so my mind wasn’t really on playing… When I got there, I was immediately playing so there was no real time to overthink,” Fus said.
Even though Team B was not able to advance to the Final Four (Presidents Cup) due to Team A finishing ahead of them, Fus still feels like he accomplished great things in this tournament beating very talented teams.
“I drew with three high rated players in my rating, but the most important one was we drew with a very strong team from St. Louis. We finished ahead of them, but eventually they qualified,” Fus said.
The UTRGV Chess Team will be competing in the President’s Cup later this year in April. for more information visit the official chess website.
