Hi Everyone,
Many of you have heard about 7th grader, Sebastian Lopez, one of our top DIG chess players who lives in Bridgeport. Sebastian has been living an incredible chess journey in the past year. A year ago, he started participating in chess tournaments and classes. He began with a rating of around 800 USCF. Within a year, he was able to bring his rating from 800->1417 (his current rating). It takes years of consistent studying/playing for most players to get to that level, but Sebastian is showing rapid improvement. 1417 is higher rated than some of our DIG coaches!
Sebastian's major achievements include placing 5th in the Annual New York Scholastic Championship (around 100 participants in his section), winning 2nd place in the U1400 section at Foxwoods Open (including adults) and receiving a cash prize of $1,300 along with winning the Fairfield County Interscholastic Chess Individual Championship (best high school chess players in Fairfield County). He is catching the eyes of private high schools in the area. Yes, chess players get recruited too!
Here are some recent news stories about Sebastian:
1.
https://bronx.news12.com/
2.
3.
https://bronx.news12.com/2-
Sebastian Lopez has a big interest in participating in the Chicago Open Chess Tournament from May 26th-May 30th (https://new.uschess.org/31st-
Playing at a tournament this high level would be an amazing opportunity for Sebastian. We want to sponsor Sebastian and his coach, Jithu Sajeevan (who has been with Sebastian at every major tournament he participated in) to attend the Chicago Open. We are hoping that some of our DIG parents can help us with a small donation to make this trip happen.
The total budget for this trip is $3000.00 (hotel fee, tournament entry fee, flight, and other transportation fees). Please Venmo the Starbuck Foundation (@StarbuckFoundation) if you would like to support Sebastian and Coach Jithu!
If Sebastian can become a professional chess player in the future, he will become a motivator for so many other Bridgeport kids to focus on chess and become great at it too. The effects that would have on the Bridgeport community would be amazing in so many ways.
