USM Chess Team Competes at State; Wins City Championship

University School of Milwaukee’s chess teams competed in two recent competitions: the 2025 State Scholastic Chess Championship and the City Chess Championships. The teams had strong finishes in both events. Congratulations to the team members and Fred Lange, chess team coach and Upper School math teacher.

2025 State Scholastic Chess Championship

The state competition was held at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh campus on Saturday, March 22 and attended by more than 30 teams from across the state. USM, the defending state champs, tied for second place with Green Bay Catholic. 

USM’s varsity team (with total points in parentheses) consisted of Aradh Kaur ’26 (board 1, 2.5); Jind Kaur ’28 (board 2, 3.5), who won a trophy for her top scores; Alex Chen ’25 (board 3, 3); and Ezran Anastas ’25 (board 4, 1.5).

In the K5 division, all four team members won three of their five games, taking home the 5th place trophy. There were more than 100 players in this division. Team members were: Finn Campbell ’35, Jack Campbell ’37, Anton Sugiyama Carter ’36, and Niko Kostopoulos ’32.    

In the K8 division, team members Jiyan Singh ’30 and Sam Yuan ’29 both won three out of five games.

USM’s JV division only had one player, Jason Wu ’27, but he played an important role as the alternate for the varsity team, and also won three out of his five games.

In addition, USM regained the state title of bughouse championship as well as three trophies for partnerships, and the traveling top school team trophy. Bughouse is a chess variant with special capturing rules and fast time controls that is played by four players divided into two teams of two players each. Allied players work to checkmate a player from the other side or make them run out of time. Joining the players above for the bughouse competition were alumni Hersh Singh ’24 paired with Ryan Murphy ’11 (3rd place); and Chris Seaman ’93 paired with former USM student Bradley Schlesinger (5th place). Alex Chen ’25 and Ezran Anastas ’25 earned 7th place in the bughouse tournament.

The team of Jind Kaur ’28 and Jiyan Singh ’30 also tied for 5th place due to the points they earned, but their tiebreaks put them out of the trophies.

The team of Jason Wu ’27 and Sam Yuan ’29 did a fine job, beating many Waupaca teams, which aided in USM's eventual win.

The creative trophy is now on display at the chess bodega in room 4112.

City Chess Championships

For the eighth year in a row, USM’s chess team won the City Chess Championships. More than 64 students from area schools gathered for the tournament, held at USM on Friday, March 7. 

USM fielded three teams. Team A, which won the tournament, consisted of Alex Chen ’25, Aradh Kaur ’26, Jind Kaur ’28, and Jiyan Singh ’30.

Team B, which earned 1st place in Division 2, consisted of Sam Yuan ’29, Ayan Iyengar ’29, Surya Sinha ’29, and Sophie Kouklin ’29.

Team C earned 2nd place in Division 2 and included Ezran Anastas ’29, Jason Wu ’27, Niko Kostopoulos ’32, Everett Segerdahl ’33, and Anton Sugiyama Carter ’36. They had to rotate in just four of the five players for each of the four rounds.