Double World Under 8 Girls Champion Ivana Furtado leads the largest ever
squad of twenty participants fielded by Goa in the National Under Nine Chess
Championships which gets underway at the Bapu Samaj Seva Kendra in New Delhi
in approximately a fortnight's time.
Ivana, who has the World and Asian Girls titles under her belt, will try to
claim the National Championship for the first time. Her best ever finish was
third in the National Under 7 Championships held in Aurangabad. Her coach
Raghunandan Gokhale has expressed confidence that Ivana will achieve her
target in this event. Also in the hunt for medals are the two girls - Gauri
Hadkonkar and Riya Sawant - who had both performed creditably in last year's
edition at Bangalore.
The team comprising 5 official entries and 15 donor entries is as follows -
Girls (Ivana Furtado, Gauri Hadkonkar, Riya Sawant, Sonali Bandekar,
Shivangi Behki, Urvi Bandekar, Liesel Braganza and Apoorva Naik).
Boys (Anirudh Bhat, Ritviz Parab, Saish Bandodkar, Snehil Shetty, Sumukh
Pinge, Nitesh Berulkar, Rishubh Naik, Tatvesh Sawant, Josiah Rebello, Kapil
Pavse, Anant Prabhudesai and Girish Kulkarni).
SOURCE: Sameer Salgaocar - Vice President, All-India Chess Federation
