UTD Takes Top Individual, Team Honors At National Chess Tournament in Orlando

RICHARDSON, Texas (Dec. 13, 2004) – The nation’s top college chess team earned more honors over the weekend at the National K-12/Collegiate Chess Championships in Orlando, Fla. Players from The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) won trophies for both the best individual and best team performances in the collegiate section of the event, held Dec. 10-12 at Disney World.

Andrei Zaremba, 22, a UTD graduate student from Michigan, and William Aramil, 19, a freshman from Terrell, Texas, were crowned co-champions among individual college competitors. Both earned six out of a total of seven possible points. Zaremba was also co-champion of last year’s National K-12/Collegiate tournament.

Finishing third in the Orlando event was Tenzing Shaw, a student at Knox College in Illinois .

Other UTD players who finished among the top 10 places and received a trophy include:

• Ali Morshedi, 21, a senior from Houston, fourth place.
• Kalin Nonchev, 25, a senior from Bulgaria, tied for fifth place.
• Ryan Milisits, 18, a freshman from Pittsburgh, Pa., sixth place.
• Evan Rosenberg, 21, a senior from New York, eighth place.
• Marc Fuhrmann, 19, a junior from Germany, 10 th place.

While the collegiate portion of the National Scholastic K-12/Collegiate event – known as the National Grade – is a competition among individuals, the top three scores of players from the same institution serve as a team score as well. UTD was the 2004 tournament’s top team, followed in order by The Ohio State University and Roane State Community College of Tennessee.

Long the nation’s premier tournament for students in kindergarten through 12 th grade, the competition was opened last year for the first time to college players. Six players from UTD entered the 2003 event and swept the top six individual places and clinched the team title.

UTD wears the mantle of best college chess team in the land by virtue of its first-place finish in last December’s Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship, the most prestigious tournament of its kind held each year in the Western Hemisphere .

About UTD

The University of Texas at Dallas, located at the convergence of Richardson, Plano and Dallas in the heart of the complex of major multinational technology corporations known as the Telecom Corridor®, enrolls more than 14,000 students. The school’s freshman class traditionally stands at the forefront of Texas state universities in terms of average SAT scores. The university offers a broad assortment of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs. For additional information about UTD, please visit the university’s web site at www.utdallas.edu.