Last weekend, a team of Harker students won the K-12 Championship at the CalChess State Scholastic Championship at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The team – senior Vignesh Panchanatham, junior Michael Wang, sophomore Michael Tang, fifth grader Vyom Vidyarthi, and fourth graders Anika Rajaram and Mihir Kotbagi – scored a total of 16 points to secure victory. In the K-6 Beginner team competition, fifth grader Anderson Chung, fourth graders James Lai and Alejandro Cheline, third grader Ian Cheline and second graders Jacob Chung and Jeffery Xu took first place.

In individual events, Panchanatham won first in the K-12 Championship, where Wang and Tang both placed in the top 10 and Vidyarthi among the top 15 in a 66-person event. Other standout performances were seen from Nathan Yan, grade 1, who finished in the top five in the K-6 Junior Varsity category, K-3 Championship competitors Rohan Rajaram, grade 1, and Omya Vidyarthi, grade 2, who both placed in the top 15, and third grader Lucas Lum, who reached the top 10 in K-3 Junior Varsity.