Our Barbreck Chess Program has continued to flourish in 2024 with numbers growing in both our Chess Intensive and Lunchtime Chess Club sessions.   

In early Term 2, the Barbreck Chess Tournament was held for the third year running with 55 students from Years 3 to 6 participating.   

This year’s Competition saw many new students competing under tournament conditions for the first time. There were some impressive performances this year, with some girls challenging our more accomplished players and finishing in the top placings.  

In equal third place was Ashley Siswanto (Year 5) and Sienna Xu (Year 5). In equal first place was Aimee Davenport (Year 6) and Sienna Yu (Year 6). Excellent performances were also awarded to Elena Chen for the top Year 4 student and Annabelle Qin for the top Year 3 student.    

This semester a small team of players from Barbreck will compete at interschool chess competitions. These events allow our Chess Team to continue developing and extending their skill level competing against some of the best players in the state. For some of our players, this will be their first interschool chess experience. and the start of many more as they progress into their senior years of schooling.   

As Chess continues to be a popular co-curricular activity offered at St Catherine’s, it is helpful to note the research supporting the benefits of incorporating Chess into a school’s curriculum.  

Here is a list of some of the benefits to students from playing Chess: 

• Chess Helps You Focus – The intense focus required during a chess game is useful in everyday life when confronted with school assignments, daily tasks, and deadlines. 
• Chess Helps to Develop Creativity – A shy and passive person might play more reservedly, while an outgoing and social person might be a bold attacker. You can show your creativity in the type of moves, plans, and tactics you come up with on the board. 
• Chess Builds Confidence – Building new skills and learning from mistakes, and the consequences of your moves, help students identify weaknesses and improve and develop their sense of confidence. 
• Chess Helps Develop Problem-Solving Skills – In every chess game, you face challenges and problems that you have to solve to play your best game. Chess can help you think ahead, not rush your decisions, and weigh the pluses and minuses of your choices. This correlates to challenges we face in everyday life. Just as in chess, we try to make the best choices to develop positive outcomes for our lives. 
• Chess Exercises Both Sides of The Brain – When playing chess, your brain will be challenged to exercise logic, develop pattern recognition, make decisions visually and analytically, and test your memory. Any age can enjoy chess—as a result these brain exercises can be part of the health of your brain your entire life! An active brain is a healthy brain! 
• Chess Helps You Learn How to Be Calm Under Pressure – An intense game of chess where you have given everything, your time is running low, and you still have to make critical decisions to bring the point home teaches us to remain calm under pressure. You have to be intensely focused while at the same time staying calm so that your brain can work to its maximum. We are all faced with deadlines, presentations, interviews, and tests throughout our life. Just as in a chess game, we have to remain confident and calm to perform our best.   
• If your daughter wants to try Chess this term, we encourage her to turn up to our Monday sessions in the STEM Lab.

Our Chess Coach, Mr Ross Neumann, continues to offer coaching sessions on Mondays before school. Details are provided below:

Location: STEM Lab, Level 1 Barbreck Building 

Cost: Free 

Days: Mondays during lunch from 1.20pm to 1.50pm (bring your lunch) 

While we encourage girls to commit to attending for the term, it remains open for girls to come and go as they please.  

For further information about the Program, please contact: 

Mr Tim Tainsh ttainsh@stcatherines.net.au  

Mrs Louise Thompson – lthompson@stcatherines.net.au