Quigley's Chess Team, The Chessnuts, finished their best season in history with a hard-fought win over the St. Patrick High School's Shamrocks. In the first regular season match of the 2004-2005 season Quigley played St. Patrick and scored a 30 to 20 victory. We both went undefeated during the season until St. Pat's drew against St. Joseph of Westchester and we lost our only conference match of the year to Fenwick. Thus we finished in first place by one-half game due to the draw. The stage was set for the conference championships.
Playing in the finals were the top teams of the conference. This included Quigley, St. Patrick, Luther South, Mount Carmel, Brother Rice, and St. Ignatius. Two eligible teams, Fenwick and St. Joseph, did not attend the play-offs.
As first & second place teams, Quigley and St. Patrick were awarded byes into the second round. In that round each team scored wins, Quigley over St. Ignatius and St. Patrick over Luther South. After months of play, it was now down to a re-match of the very first day of conference competition. St. Patrick was taking dead aim at the Quigley five to avenge that opening loss.
The match started with Quigley's 5th Board, Jerry Del Real, annihilating his opponent in under 10 minutes and 1st Board, Michael Zigulich, keeping his unbeaten streak intact with a win. Quigley had earned 20 points with 3 matches to play and it looked like an easy path into the end of a wonderful season. WRONG! In hard fought, but losing efforts Quigley lost on boards 3 and 4 and faced the real possibility that our opening day score would be reversed with the CHESSNUTS on the short end.
The game on board 2, with Sophomore Miguel Lopez playing for Quigley, became the focus of both teams. If Miguel wins, we take the match 31 to 19; if he loses, we lose the match 20-30; if he draws, we win the match 25.5 to 24.5. The tension mounted as Miguel's clock ran under a minute while his opponent had 10 minutes left. The position had possibilities for each side but the time factor could present very knotty problems. Each player tried desperately to find just the right move to destroy the other. Finally it became clear that each player would queen a pawn on successive moves but Miguel's king would immediately be attacked by his opponent's new queen and the opponent also had one more pawn on the board on the rook's file. Thus if he could force the exchange of queens, he might be able to queen the extra pawn and win the game. Miguel had to avoid the exchange, or if he could not avoid the exchange, he had to be able to move his king to block the pawn. All this had happen with only 20 seconds remaining on his clock!
Miguel moved instantly whenever his opponent made his move. Deftly avoiding the dreaded exchange of queens, his opponent finally decided to advance the extra pawn giving Miguel the opportunity to repeatedly check his opponent and still avoid the exchange. Now Miguel's opponent's clock became a factor. Although Miguel had to move instantly each time, his opponent allowed time to go off his own clock so that he was under two minutes himself. The tension was unbelievably great and then it happened. The game was a clear draw and the youngest member of the CHESSNUT team had saved the day! Quigley repeats as conference champion for the third year in a row. Since all members of the present team return next year the question is: Will 2006 see a four-peat?
Mike Plenys '08 - 5/18/05