Friday, March 22, 2024
  Events and Exhibits, Around Campus, Happenings

By Victoria Brito Morales

BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS – MARCH 22, 2024 – The three-time national champion UTRGV Chess Team will compete next weekend for the sixth time since 2013 in the President’s Cup, the Final Four of Collegiate Chess in Richardson, Texas on the UT Dallas campus.

On Tuesday, March 26, the UTRGV community will gather for a send-off celebration in honor of the team, which will travel to Dallas to compete March 30-31 for the national collegiate chess title.

Team members taking UTRGV to the national President’s Cup championship are:

  • GM Viktor Gazik, junior economics major from Bojnice, Slovakia.
  • IM Gleb Dudin, freshman psychology major from Moscow.
  • IM Irakli Beradze, computer science graduate student from Tbilisi, Georgia.
  • IM Shawn Rodrigue-Lemieux, sophomore biomedical sciences major from Montreal.

The celebration will be from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at La Sala in the Student Union on the Brownsville Campus. There will be light refreshments and a chance to meet the team. Planned speakers include UTRGV Chess Coach Bartek Macieja, and Dr. Stephen Hirst, associate vice president for Strategic Enrollment & Student Affairs, who oversees the UTRGV Chess Program.

This is our sixth time going to the Final Four,” Macieja said. “The team is ready. They have practiced and prepared and we hope for the best possible outcome.”

UTRGV will face the University of Missouri, UT Dallas and reigning champion Webster University, as it vies for its fourth championship win in less than a decade. The team has taken the title three consecutive times, in 2018, 2019 and 2021.



ABOUT UTRGV

The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) was created by the Texas Legislature in 2013 as the first major public university of the 21st century in Texas. This transformative initiative provided the opportunity to expand educational opportunities in the Rio Grande Valley, including a new School of Medicine, and made it possible for residents of the region to benefit from the Permanent University Fund – a public endowment contributing support to the University of Texas System and other institutions.

UTRGV has campuses and off-campus research and teaching sites throughout the Rio Grande Valley including in Boca Chica Beach, Brownsville (formerly The University of Texas at Brownsville campus), Edinburg (formerly The University of Texas-Pan American campus), Harlingen, McAllen, Port Isabel, Rio Grande City, and South Padre Island. UTRGV, a comprehensive academic institution, enrolled its first class in the fall of 2015, and the School of Medicine welcomed its first class in the summer of 2016.