Thir­teen (13) tal­ent­ed T&T ju­nior na­tion­als will chal­lenge among the re­gion's best at the Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Caribbean (CAC) Youth Chess Tour­na­ment, card­ed to take place from Wednes­day to Sun­day, in San Jose, Cos­ta Ri­ca.

The tour­na­ment is ex­pect­ed to be high­ley com­pet­i­tive with the T&T con­tin­gent, in­clud­ing na­tion­al ju­nior fe­male cham­pi­on and mul­ti­ple CAC bronze medal­ist, WCM Ja­van­na Smith and for­mer Carif­ta gold and sil­ver medal­ist Joshua John­son up against com­peti­tors from Venezuela, Colom­bia, Pana­ma, Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, and oth­er neigh­bour­ing coun­tries.

T&T has been quite suc­cess­ful in pre­vi­ous years and for the past two edi­tions, the coun­try has brought home an av­er­age of six medals with sec­ond placed over­all fin­ish­es at these same tour­na­ments.

The T&T con­tin­gent in­cludes Smith, Joshn­son, Ma­hen­dra Singh (na­tion­al U-16 cham­pi­on), Gabriel­la John­son (na­tion­al U-14 girls' cham­pi­on and CAC and Carif­ta medal­ist), Shan­non Year­wood (CAC bronze medal­ist), Zurich Smith (U-14), Daniel Bho­la (na­tion­al U-14 run­ner-up), Del­la Marie Wal­cott (na­tion­al U-12 cham­pi­on, for­mer Carif­ta and CAC gold medal­ist), Sean Year­wood (na­tion­al U-10 cham­pi­on and mul­ti­ple CAC bronze medal­ist), Ky­ron Agos­ti­ni (Carif­ta bronze medal­ist), WCM Shemi­lah James (na­tion­al U-10 girls cham­pi­on and CAC gold medal­ist), Chaya John­son (na­tion­al U-8 run­ner-up) and Vand­off Smith (na­tion­al U-18 cham­pi­on).

The con­tin­gent will be ac­com­pa­nied by the TTCA trea­sur­er, Mala Agos­ti­ni, as well as oth­er del­e­gates and par­ents. The TTCA pres­i­dent An­der­son Gor­don has ex­pressed ex­cite­ment about T&T's strong prospects of suc­cess at this tour­na­ment.

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