The Illinois Chess Association is proud to announce the 2018-19 class of Warren Junior Scholars and Rising Stars.
The Warren Junior Scholar program was started over 30 years ago by Helen Warren, a past ICA president, to recognize the most accomplished and promising scholastic chess players in the state. In 2015, the Rising Stars program was added to recognize the next tier of up and coming scholastic players. These two programs together recognize the top scholastic chess talent in our state. Invitation to these programs is based on USCF chess ratings and active participation in chess tournaments.
In addition to providing recognition to these players, the program’s purpose is to nurture the highest-potential scholastic chess players so that they may compete on a national and international stage; and, to provide students with an opportunity for rigorous study that will give them the skills to become leaders in other fields as adults.
More information about these programs can be found here: http://www.il-chess.org/aboutwjrs-72.
Many events for this group are already in the planning stage for this year, including Sunday evening online training sessions, an in-person training day and awards banquet in October and several online tournaments through Internet Chess Club.
Although a lot of effort is put into identifying the players who qualify for this program, it is possible that some players may have been inadvertently missed. If you are aware of a player who should be on the list but isn’t, please check the qualifications HERE and then email name, USCF #, and grade in the fall of 2018 to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The list will be finalized on August 1.
If you find your name on this list you should have already received an email from the director. If not, please email Mrs. Grandy at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Congratulations from the ICA!
| 2018-19 Warren Junior Scholars | |||
| Adam Bareket | Ishaar Ganesan | Sarah Lin | Aydin Turgut |
| Tom Bareket | Gabriel Gronski | Shreya Mangalam | Abhyudhaya Venkat |
| Nicholas Bruha | Rohit Guha | Dimitar Mardov | Emma Wang |
| Benjamin Chen | Deniz Gulecyuz | Ekansh Mehrotra | Ricky Wang |
| David Chen | Kevin Ho | Rishi Narayanan | William Wang |
| Yuvraj Chennareddy | Aria Hoesley | David Peng | Natalie Wisniowski |
| Henry Curcio | Akhil Kalghatgi | Elijah Platnick | Arthur Xu |
| Dimitri Deligiannis | Nikhil Kalghatgi | Patrick Rao | Ashley Yan |
| Vincent Do | Avi Kaplan | Shreyas Reddy | David Yong |
| Adam Elgat | Nicholas Ladan | Jack Santner | Richard Zhang |
| Aren Emrikian | Marissa Li | Anshul Shetty | Alex Zhao |
| Jacob Furfine | Roger Li | Matthew Stevens | Alan C Wei |
| 2018-19 Rising Stars | |||
| Ajay Balaraman | Brian Gong | Max Matura | Nathaniel Sobery |
| Rahul Bammidi | Leddy Grady | Sohum Mehta | Josephine Swan |
| Mohit Bayyarapu | Sarah Grandy | Ankush Moolky | William Tan |
| Alex Beecher | Aditya Gupta | Stefan Mueller | Margarita Tsyganova |
| Sohan Bendre | Zalan Gyorgy | Vamsi Munaganuri | Kaya Turgut |
| Sruthi Bharath Kumar | Sawyer Harris | Anusha Nadkarni | Christian Turk |
| William Cahill | Harry Heller | Andrey Novikov | Donald Valencia |
| Andy Cao | Jack Heller | Aditya Oberai | Spencer Vincent |
| Leon Lang Cao | Elton Huang | Anisha Oberai | Christopher Von Hoff |
| Aidan Carey | Sean Insley | Vikram Oberai | Adam Wallach |
| Jonah Chen | Advaith Kodipparambil | Keoni Osborne | David Wallach |
| Evan Chui | Ryan Kong | Madhav Parthasarathy | Julian Wang |
| Sahil Conjeevaram | Daniel Lee | Elijah Patterson | Justin Weinzweig |
| Eduard Danilyan | Jonathan Lee | Jacob Plotnick | Colin Wicks |
| Matthew Daum | Merrill Lee | Nandini Prakash | Georgia Wolf |
| Jacob Davis | Brooklyn Li | Ria Raj | Matthew Wong |
| Jeremiah Davis | Michael Li | Layla Rodriguez | Tuoyu Yang |
| Eli Elder | Patrick Y Li | Ricky Roman | Samraat Zagade |
| Luke Faxon | Junliang Liu | Christopher Sakaliyski | Daniel Zhang |
| Sam Fayn | Emmett Madigan | Deepak Salian | Owen Zhang |
| Ethan Gagliano | Sadkrith Malladi | Nisha Salian | David Zimmermann |