Probably half of the elementary schools in Richland have established chess clubs but until this year only Sunset View and Amistad in Kennewick had regular clubs.  With some encouragement from a local group called Washington Elementary Chess Champions (http://www.chesschampions.org/), several other Kennewick schools received sets and boards and information about starting a chess club.

Having discovered this, Gilbert's thought of having an inter-school match changed into an idea of starting a Kennewick Elementary Team Championship somewhat like the collegiate team championships where a school could have some number of teams that played matches against one another with the winner of the match determined by the most wins of individual games.  After deciding on a date with Sunset View and inviting the other district schools,  there ended up with two teams of five from Amistad and three teams from Sunset View and three teams from Ridgeview (which didn't have a club when Andrew went there in first grade).

Figuring that there would be time for five rounds at the most (March 7 happened to be an early release day), the format was to draw numbers to assign teams in two pools of four.  Each team would play the other three teams in their pool and the top two from each pool would advance to the championship bracket for two more games and the other four would play in the consolation bracket.  Amistad's two teams were divided into 5th graders and non-5th graders and the other schools set up their own team divisions and names.

Pool A:  RV Squad Orange, SSV Happy Flappys, RV Chessonators, Amistad Black and White Knights (Andrew's team)

Pool B: SSV  Slurpees, RV Skittles, SSV Mickey Mouse Suicide Bombers, Amistad 5th Graders

The Flappys were clear winners in Pool A and the Knights edged the Chessonators on tiebreak, while the Bombers edged out the 5th Graders on the basis of a first-round game decided by the clock.  In the semifinals, the Bombers defeated the Knights 3-2 but the Flappys and 5th Graders fought to a 2.5-2.5 tie.  A card flip (couldn't find a coin) in the Flappys' favor made the finals an all-Sunset View affair with a 3-2 Bomber victory.  The 5th Graders took 3rd with a solid 3.5-1.5 win over their schoolmates with Andrew's win on Board 1 the lone Knight win, which also gave him a 5-0 record for the tournament.