Le Mar Abbott and Vedant Shetty will match their youthful chess skills against regional counterparts as they come up against young players from the region.
The two youngsters are representing St Vincent and the Grenadines at the invitation of the Trinidad and Tobago Chess Federation as the participate in the Central Americas and the Caribbean Chess Festival taking place in Trinidad between August 21st 2023 and August 26th 2023.
Shetty will play in the Under 8 category while Abbott will play in the Under 10 category. This is the first time that St. Vincent & the Grenadines is participating in this intra-regional competition.
Shetty and Abbott have therefore created history as the first two (2) junior players to represent this country at such a level in the sport of Chess.
The team is receiving technical assistance from Mr. Chinedu Enemchukwu who did exceedingly well whilst representing St. Vincent and the Grenadines at the Chennai Olympiad in India last year.
Suman Alva is the Liaison Officer of the team while Dr. Pushparaj Shetty is the Team Manager.
President of the SVG Chess Federation Senator, Israel R. Bruce, has expressed confidence that Shetty and Abbott will give a good account of themselves. He urged the players simply to give of their best and that will be fine with the national body. President, Bruce said if they go on to win games that such will be great but that the SVGCF did not want to place undue pressure on the kids to be winners in this their first stint. The main objective is to create these poster kids that others will emulate so that the sport of Chess will take off amongst kids with the ambition to represent their country.
“The country will benefit from this development in more ways than one” said Bruce. “As young ambassadors the players will have a sense of both pride and responsibility, their strategic and critical thinking will continue to develop, they will be trendsetters in addition to being that of history makers” he went on to say. Vedant Shetty is the National Youth Champion who was crowned as such at the completion of the 2022 Tyrone Jack Memorial National Chess Championship.
Both players were excited to take on this challenge as ambassadors of SVG and are looking forward to performing well in the festival.
Chairman of the Sub Committee for Competitions and Development Mr. Brian Cottle was at the Argyle International Airport to see the team as it departed for Trinidad. Cottle plays the critical role in heading up national competitions and advising the executive on regional and international tournaments that can bring benefits to the national sporting body.
The Federation will set eyes on the 2024 FIDE Olympiad to be held in Budapest, Hungary. President Bruce intimated that the hope is to have the team commence preparations by September 2023 as such giving the selected 5 players maximum time to be ready for the next global event. St. Vincent and the Grenadines was represented in 2022 by Chinedu Enemchukwu, Brian Cottle, Oris Robinson, Ugur Mentes, and James Schnieder.