On Saturday the 9th of August, the Jeppe Girls Chess team and Mrs Gillespie, once again celebrated Womenโs day by participating in the SA Womenโs Open Chess Festival. This prestigious annual event is held at the Deloitte Building in Woodmead Johannesburg.
The top prize is a 4-year scholarship at UJ.
This year, Jeppe girls had 15 entrants. Sadly our captain Nicole Song was too ill to participate. This was the first game she missed in 3 years! After 8 hours and playing 6 games of chess each, Dominique Meysel, one of our Jeppe Girls entrants emerged in a tie for the top position. After a very close and tense and rapid game (the players had only 5 minutes each in this tiebreak!) Dominique was narrowly beated by Ashley Ndlovu.
Overall, Jeppe Girls were one of the schools with the most female entrants! Congratulations to our players, 12 of whom featured in the top 20:
Dominique Meysel โ 2nd place
Tafadzwa Makhuza โ 3rd Position
Kiara Meysel – 4th Position
Mahima Vandagar โ 11th
Zama Gama -12th
Rika Rajkumar โ 13th
Shelley Anne Drysdale 14th
Kimberley Mugadza -15th
Nompumelelo Dube โ 16th
Lizan Potgieter 18th
Rethabile Maboko and Minal Sarfraz tie 20th
Sasha Morare, Keynesia Martins and Olea Khambula were also ranked in the top 40, winning 3 out of their 6 games.
