2009 WORLD YOUTH SCRABBLE CHAMPIONSHIP
| 1 | Ong Suanne (MY) |
| 2 | Alastair Richards (AU) |
| 3 | Michael McKenna (AU) |
| 4 | Preedee Khongthanarat (TH) |
| 5 | Charnrit Khongthanarat (TH) |
| 6 | Oluwaseun Oyelek (NG) |
| 7 | Wong Zhi Yuan (SG) |
| 8 | Wanchana Jirapitikul (TH) |
| 9 | Goutham Jayaraman (SG) |
| 10 | Charas Worapotpisut (TH) |
The winner is Ong Suanne from Malaysia, pictured above at the start of one of her games against Alastair Richards. The top ten are as shown here. Presentations were made to all prizewinners at a prizegiving ceremony with honoured dignitaries including a royal princess from the Sultanate of Johor. Below is a photo of the players at the 2009 World Youth Scrabble Championship in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Click the photo for a larger version and CLICK HERE FOR MORE PHOTOS AND DETAILED RESULTS
| HIGH GAME: Wong Zhi Yuan 589 |
| HIGH WORD: Nutt Treepoonsuk SEDGIEST 158 |
| BEST PLAYER UNDER 10 Anand Bharadwaj (AU) |
| BEST PLAYER UNDER 12 Nicholas Vasquez (US) |
| BEST PLAYER UNDER 14 Matthew Malitao (PH) |
| BEST PLAYER UNDER 16 Michael McKenna (AU) |
| ENCOURAGEMENT AWARD (youngest player in top 25): Victor Gwee (SG) age 12 |
WYSC 2009 REPORT
Pre-events: The fourth, and largest, WYSC was played at Johor Bahru, Malaysia, immediately after the 10th World Scrabble Championship and 8th Causeway Challenge events, in a “World Festival of Scrabble”. Michael Tang brought together over 200 Scrabblers from around the world, in a bonanza of Scrabble tournaments. Many of the 80 WYSC players had already competed in one or both of the prior events, honing the skills of most of the top ten finishers. At the same time as WSC was happening in Malaysia, the Princess Cup in Thailand saw a small but dedicated field of international players competing against the best Thai youth. The Thais prevailed, with Charas taking out the US$3000 top prize. Another (fun) event happened prior to WYSC – the combined Scrabble/ Trivia afternoon for adults and youth, with mixed teams. The winning team was Joe (UK) Phillip (AU) & Martus (PH). Second were Mohammed (PH), Robert (AU) & Diane P (UK), and third were Siva (Qat), Jumoke (NG) & Michael (AU).
The future of WYSC: During World Festival of Scrabble, some WESPA Youth Subcommittee members discussed future WYSC events, confirming that WYSC10 would be held in Manila, Philippines, after Causeway - with cheap flights from Singapore and Kuala Lumpur to Manila, we hope many young players will again compete in Causeway Challenge (1-5 December 2010), on their way to WYSC (and also possibly in Princess Cup, date to be advised). Future WYSC events will be larger, as the committee feel the best way to attract more young players worldwide is for the world to see just how many good young players we already have. This will involve a larger number of paid entries, in addition to the official quota of free entries offered to each national association. Those prepared to pay extra fees can apply direct to the organising committee, itemising their Scrabble experience, and they will not affect the national quotas in that year or following years. Inclusion of more paid entries will allow these young players to experience playing their peers, and will encourage them to improve their games, and thus qualify for their own countries in future. A more practical consideration is that their entry fees will help fund this event, which as yet has no major sponsor. (A report on these discussions will be promulgated via WESPA shortly.)
Opening night jitters
The evening before WYSC was stressful. Because the Prince of Johor, Tunku Ibrahim Ismail, had taken an interest in supporting our youth scrabble event, we had to rearrange the program to finish earlier on Thursday. Another major problem was clocks. We thought we had organised to borrow 55 clocks, but things went astray in the communication, and they were not available …panic, as I contacted everyone “local”. With the help of the Thais, plus a major effort by Cheah and Winston to hire clocks from Singapore, we were able to cover all but two tables (in the adult side tournament, the Johor Bahru Progressive Round Robin).
The official WYSC reserve player, Chang Ching Yet, was required to stay around in case of players dropping out of WYSC midway, as did happen. First a young boy became ill, and so we moved Chang Ching Yet from the JBPRR into WYSC. A few games later, another player took ill, and we were then able to send Chang Ching Yet back to JBPRR. This was disconcerting for him, but we managed to avoid byes for WYSC. Chang Ching Yet will be offered free entry to WYSC10, in recognition of his assistance this year.
A few players did not even know the 2-letter words. This will be addressed in future – maybe by having a compulsory coaching session prior to WYSC, for inexperienced players. Whilst such things as 2-letter words and their hooks are included on the youthscrabble website, some players do not seem to be referring to that website. On the positive side, the website also has a tutorial about setting up Zyzzyva Card-box, and many young players are now taking advantage of that wonderful learning tool.
One of the things which impressed me is how seriously these young people take the game. Nicholas (11) was doing complex calculations whilst his opponent made his move, using the one available hooking spot on the board. Solemnly, Nicholas declared, “There was a 95% chance that you wouldn’t have that tile”
Adjacent tournament for those who didn’t qualify for WYSC:
Running JBPRR in the adjacent area was exciting for the young players, as they were able to breathe the same air as players such as Nigel Richards (World Scrabble Champion 2007, runner-up 2009) and David Eldar (winner of the inaugural WYSC in 2006). The young players also witnessed the fact that even champions don’t win all their games – after 5 games, Nigel had 1.5 wins, and David 1 win. However, both demonstrated why they are champions, by recovering to eventually finish first and second in the 25-game event. The young players were impressed to hear of David’s 702 game, with the triple-triple MANRENTS for 158. Immediately after this was announced to the WYSC players, Jessica Pratesi sat down to play her next game, and her first rack was MANRENT. She could have played REMNANT instead, but said it was more fun to play the word she had just learnt.
Chang Ching Yet (the youth reserve) created some sort of record for his High Word in JBPRR tournament, scoring 262 for NARTJIES. It was a shame for him that he played it in the wrong tournament!
Interesting words:
For variety, we asked players to record some of their interesting plays. There were a couple of prizes awarded for these words. These were given to players from countries which had not been represented in official awards - the choice was entirely subjective. Jacob Sunny (Qat), won with KVETCH (an interesting front hook from a new player) meaning “to complain”, and Jessica Pratesi (UK) won with THREEPS (which I didn’t know) meaning “to dispute” (an interesting juxtaposition of meanings). These players received toys donated by Mattel Malaysia – fancy variants of UNO. Most official prize-winners also received gifts donated by Mattel in addition to their trophies. I had been going to present these at the final ceremony, but due to the involvement of royalty and not wanting to take too long over the prize-giving, they were presented prior to this.
Some other interesting words included VIBRISSAE (Markus Loke), OZAENA and PECORINO (Ker Jen Ho), SFORZATI (Markus Loke), ACYLOIN (Ong Suanne), MANIHOT (Goutham Jayaraman), ENCAENIA (Oluwaseun Oyeleke ) QUASAR (Christopher Walleck) and NAPOLEON (Dewin Goh).
The winner.
It must have been lonely at the top for Ong Suanne – not only was she the single lady in the top 10, but also the only Malaysian this time. Four of the best local players were caught out by a change to the Malaysian exam timetable – Khoo Beng Way (runner-up 2008), Ramiraj and the brothers Chung, who have all featured in the top ten in past years. Ramiraj did visit us after his exams finished, which was great (particularly as his wonderful father Sundraraj helped us sort out a dire problem with the printer - by buying us a new one, so that the participation certificates could be processed). Some other recent WYSC competitors were also there, helping us (Karl Chin and Ian Tay), as well as Lim Li Wei who competed in JBPRR. It is great to have them still involved.
Ong Suanne put the world on notice last year, when she defeated Nigel to win Kings Cup 2008. Her WYSC win was no surprise to those of us who have expected it for the last three years. Alastair Richards held the lead for much of the time, but their final match on the last day was a win to Ong Suanne (after she lost to Alastair by one point the previous day.) This put her back in the lead, and he never regained it, despite them both dropping games during the final day to other top players (all game results are on www.youthscrabble.org). Everyone was relieved there was no final playoff (best of 5 games) such as had been held in previous years, as we all felt this was Ong Suanne’s time to win (it was the last year for both her and Alastair) and luck can sometimes adversely affect the result of final playoffs.
When Alastair first started competing against adults, aged seven, we were told about a young Malaysian girl who was also competing. We have watched the two of them grow up together in the Scrabble arena. I believe Ong Suanne began competing against adults at the age of six. These two are great role models for those who are mentoring talented young people – if they are ready to take on adults without stressing too much about the inevitable “lessons” (which is composed of “n losses”!), then please encourage them to do so. The nine-year-olds who competed this year were better behaved than most adults, and finished an honorable 28th and 68th. I look forward to the time when we have 8-year-olds competing, and don’t underrate the possibility that we will soon need an “underate” trophy as well as the “Best Under 10” trophy we used for the first time this year.
Team statistics
Thailand again topped the list for players finishing in the top ten (four, or 40%) – this was expected, as they have been building a strong youth contingent for many years. Brothers Preedee and Charnrit were inseparable, with 4th and 5th placings (Charnrit won WYSC09). Australia and Singapore were the other teams with more than one in the top ten.
It was exciting for Australia to receive two of the three giant cheques, and to have the strongest team overall (looking at average placings for the *official* team - Australia had one extra, paid, entry who hadn’t qualified with the rest of the team, so was not included in team averages. The same methodology was used for all teams).
Averages for the top 8 teams, from 14 countries competing, were:
Australia 16.5
Thailand 20.1
Singapore 22
USA 31
Sri Lanka 32
Nigeria 32.2
Malaysia 35
UK 38.3
Another exciting development was inclusion of a Nigerian player in the top ten for the first time. Oluwaseun Oyeleke has put the world on notice that the Nigerian youth team will soon be as strong as their adult competitors. Also for the first time, we had a major award go to the Philippines, who have been working hard to help their players improve. Matthew Malitao finished just outside the top ten, only because of his margin, and was awarded the prize for the “BEST PLAYER UNDER 14” - which was, technically, for the ”best player born 1st January 1996 or later”. Next year these awards will need to be renamed, as it caused confusion to those whose 14th birthday was during or just after the event. This is in line with the whole WYSC, which originally was promoted as being for under 18’s, but had to be renamed as “for players born 1st January 1992 or later” – cumbersome nomenclature, but more descriptive.
The presentation
A short time before the final ceremony, Michael Tang informed me I was expected to present some prizes and make a speech. I had earlier asked the Tournament Director, Edward Okulicz, if he would present the prizes, as I was too exhausted, and would trip over my words - so this development was a major shock. My prediction was correct, I surely tripped over words. Her Royal Highness the Princess, Tunku Aminah and her brother the Prince, plus various officials, had about 10 names each - which I mangled to the best of my ability. I had no time to write a speech, so simply spoke from my heart (which was probably better than my head by that time) about how wonderful it was to witness all these smart young people befriending each other, and challenging their brains in the process (well, I think that is what I said, certainly what I meant). I also thanked the Malaysians for their friendship and assistance. I thanked Michael Tang for bringing together the entire World Festival of Scrabble, a wonderful concept and much hard work for him. I thanked the royal family for their support. I didn’t personally thank all my wonderful helpers, in case I omitted someone and caused offence – so here goes:
Thankyou Edward for a job well done, and sometimes a very difficult job. How does one determine what to do when an (unplayable) X has jumped out of the bag and disappeared mid-game? That’s what Tournament Directors have to do – solve the really tough puzzles.
Thankyou to Judith and Louella from Qatar and Robin from Philippines, who worked tirelessly throughout the tournament on crowd control and annotating. Many of our other annotators where from Malaysia, Australia and Singapore, but this proved difficult for the roster, as most of the players at the top tables were also from these countries.
Thankyou to Barry, who did the draws, and uploaded results and photos onto the website during the event.
Thankyou Len, Vonni and Shannon, who took copious photos, including a group photo, which they used as the basis for a laminated certificate for each player.
Thankyou Karl, who (with encouragement and support from Ian) battled with Quackle and the intermittent internet connection, to post annotated games to the website.
Thankyou to Nicholina, who organised and trained annotators, in between studying for her university exams a few days later.
Thankyou to Kannan and Lalitha, parents of youngest competitor Anand, who helped with a multitude of “small” tasks, such as ensuring the smallest T-shirts went to the smallest children.
Thankyou to Winston, another annotator, but also “guardian of the clocks.”
Thankyou to “Mr Sam Timer” who is always so supportive of this event, and donated the SamTimer which was presented to the WYSC Winner this year
Behind the scenes, not even having a chance to enjoy the multi-cultural panorama, were three special people:
Trish Brighton, who donated a large chunk of the prize-money,
Don Hadley, who spent many hours labouring over the souvenir booklets
Louise Frare, who designed the XYZ logo, and sewed the burgundy “tiger” souvenir bags for each player. She also made tile bags for use during the tournament (one of which was mistaken for a “souvenir” bag, and was “souvenired” during lunch – if anyone finds a red or green bag with the XYZ logo, please return to me for use in future years)
A big thankyou goes to my patient husband, Paul, who supported me from the beginning, when I first came up with the crazy notion to get together young Scrabble players from all over the world. At that time, many countries had no young Scrabble players: now they are emerging everywhere, with countries such as Qatar fielding a large and competent team of new young players. The dream has become a reality, and can only get bigger and better from hereon.
Thankyou young people! I love meeting you and working with you – you keep me young, and inspire me to look at my Card-box more often, in the vain hope that I can keep ahead of some of you…for a short while, at least.
Karen Richards
Chair
Youth Subcommittee
WESPA
Below is the story of one country which went from having no young players, to fielding a team of seven at WYSC, within one year. Perhaps you can find inspiration and ideas for your Youth Scrabble scene.
 & Jacob (R), my star players displaying their trophies as top WYSC qualifiers.JPG)
Varun and Jacob receving trophies & Qatar WYSC team
THE MAKING AND RE-MAKING OF QATAR SCRABBLE LEAGUE .. from Mrs Judith Britten
QSL was launched the first time in late 1996 under the auspices of BSL/Roy Kietzman with BSL issuing QSL a plaque of recognition. In fact it was Philip Nelkon I first contacted and he referred me to Roy. 1997 was WSC at Washington D.C. and Qatar was allocated a seat, within 6 months of QSL’s formaton, to which we sent Asad Ul Haq.
When my husband and I left in 1998 to go back to the UK, the League went into a leadership breakdown causing it to get out of the scene within 5 years. I came back to Qatar last year and the first in my "to do" list was to revive the QSL.
The lines between me and Roy went very hot, and I was able to hook up with John Villaroman and Loreta Alban. Roy also hooked me up with Karen Richards for the Youth Scrabble.
The breakthrough came when I was requested by the International Academy for Intercultural Development (IAID), through its consultant, Vicky Mustafa, a fellow Toastmaster, to join them in offering some soft skills courses, thus the Winter Scrabble Workshop for around 30 children aged between 7-16. I agreed to conduct this program, with the proviso that we use the beginners tutorial material provided on www.youthscrabble.org
With QSL revival as my main interest, I thought this IAID connection would be the best vehicle to re-launch QSL. The IAID Directors agreed to hold a mini Scrabble tournament for the 20 top work-shoppers, and we also thought it would be a good idea to hold an Adults tournament at the same time. IAID agreed and even went further to say that they are offering QSL a home once it gets re-launched.
Roy agreed to come over to Qatar to be the TD for the Adults tourney and another original QSL player, Louella Fernandes, rejoined to act as TD for the Youth competition. We had a good turnout and good media coverage.
Thus on 9th January, QSL was re-launched by the man himself who launched it the first time, ROY KIETZMAN. Right now we have a running membership over 40, with the Youth outnumbering the Adults. We are now in collaborative Scrabble efforts with 3 schools and a community outside Doha.
For the 2009 GSC, we originally had 2 seats for Qatar. We immediately assigned the first seat to one of our Youth players, a 14 year-old, whom we saw as having great potential especially for WYSC. We held a qualifying round for the 2nd seat, which was won by Anthony Gomes (WSC veteran). Then BSL's Irfan Siddiqui delivered the good news of a 3rd seat, and then a 4th seat in a span of a week. And the 5th seat was made available to us an hour before the GCC games started.
The GCC was a turning point especially with 14-year old Jacob, who had his dream of playing with a world-rated champ. I can only guess how he must have felt seeing his name at the bottom of the list of all GCC players on the penultimate round, by which time Akhay Bandarkar had already been declared the GCC champion. Then Irfan announced that the Gibson rule will apply and that Jacob was to play the champion. I choked with so much delight in my heart for him and with tears almost blurring my vision I saw him grinning from ear to ear as he rushed to Table No 2, shook Akshay’s hand and commenced playing. That was very emotional for me, and it was such a wonderful experience for Jacob.
Back to the Friday League games, Jacob shared his experience at the GCC with his fellow players and told them that the WYSC championship is something he wants to achieve. With more media support, it caught the attention of the public, so much so that more youth players came forward in response to our campaign for the formation of the team that will compete in Malaysia.
To intensify that campaign we held a Lawn Scrabble games at Jacob’s school, the MES Indian School. That Lawn Scrabble equipment (4mx4m playing mat and regular bathroom tile-sized letter tiles plus tile racks as long as 2 regular tables put together) was something we prepared as part of our participation in the Environment Day celebrations. Unfortunately the organizers could not relate Scrabble with the environment issue so our participation was scrapped. We didn’t mind.
When we first started we had a number of enthusiastic adults joining and seeming to have caught on Roy’s main challenge – to prepare the next generation of players, the Youth. For a while they took on mentoring roles, but only to one-by-one disappear as they did not appreciate playing with the Youth who at that time were still groping around the Scrabble boards.
Our mentoring system intensified from just having the first game on Friday as such, to having mentoring sessions during the week at different times. Louella’s place was the favourite. I did a couple at my place. Loreta Alban and John Villaroman did theirs somewhere else and the Youth players were just running here and there trying to attend all the sessions. The parents were breathless, but were enjoying the busy productiveness of their children.
Being new, we did not really know how to handle the qualifying for the WYSC. We designated July as the start of the qualifying period and set a target of 24 valid games (scores no less than 280). Three games every Friday seemed so inadequate a preparation for the WYSC. The Endurance Tournament was the red feather in the cap. So far, we’ve done 3 of those. But its popularity among the Youth players just went from strength to strength, so that we are now thinking of having that as a permanent part of our playing … every last Friday of the month.
We have since July ceased accepting walk-in members as we saw how much mentoring resources were being taken away from the regular members during the league games. The adult players were getting ambushed by new players, and the regular players were not getting any farther with their games with the new ones. It was a disaster waiting to happen. The Scrabble for Beginners Course landed on my lap from heaven. IAID did a survey and Scrabble came at the top so much so that they thought running courses would be a good idea. Indeed, it was. It serves a dual-purpose: IAID to have revenues, in return for the free venue we enjoy, and for QSL to have a ready-source of already competitively-initiated members. The first 8-week course started in August and the next one will commence mid-October. What’s so beautiful with this arrangement is that I tap my young players as part of my teaching team. Jacob, Varun, Daniel and Varshini came to mentor and help the students of their age, while I concentrated on the youngest group, the 7-year olds. Out of the first course, Dylan was spotted. Jacob invited him to play in the August Endurance and he landed in the top 5. Because of inadequate number of games played we encouraged him to play on regular Fridays and by the September Endurance tournament he clocked him 21 games, 20 of which were valid games and he won more than 50% of his games.
The Endurance Tournaments brought into the fore the abilities and skill of the players which the regular Friday leagues would have taken more time to achieve. These tournaments increased the players enthusiasm and momentum and made them sharper.
“I don’t want to grow up.
I’m a Toys-R-Us kid….”
WYSC09 team, with Nene Lambino (NASCAP), Karen Richards (WESPA), Robin Rubina (Pres NASCAP) and Jojo Cayao (Mattel)
report of YOUTH SCRABBLE COACHING CLINIC IN MANILA, PHILIPPINES – May 2009
Having never visited the Philippines before, I was curious – the whole experience was most enjoyable, from the time I left the airport - very fast immigration and customs service, and so well organized. When you leave the airport, there is a place to wait for your lift, grouped according to your last name, so they can find you – I am not sure what happens if Abbott and Smith are travelling together, though!
The drive from the airport was along a major road, where beautification works have included planting numerous trees and flowers, which of course flourish in the tropical climate. It was a relief to find that all signs are in English, although they drive on the “wrong” side of the road (well, if you are an Aussie it seems wrong, but I am sure the Americans feel right at home!)
Our workshop was hosted by the largest university in the Philippines, established 1908, and situated on prime real estate - so much of it that they have constructed and leased out large commercial buildings on one corner, housing icons such as IBM. In fact, most of the names of businesses in Manila were universal - KFC, McDonalds, Starbucks etc. Fortunately, I also discovered some nice food, the local variety. I cannot wait to go back for another fresh mango and coconut juice. For lunch, the university served the children spaghetti (a universal favourite?) whilst the adults had chicken and rice. Food is a major part of the Filipino social structure, and I am pleased to say that I tried AHI TUNA whilst there, in a Greek restaurant - it was superb (of course, I only chose it because it is a “new” Collins word!)
We had 43 people at the workshop - children aged from 8 to 13, with some adults who hope to train more children in future. The Philippines is the country which has most improved in the Youth Scrabble area over the last 4 years. Whilst Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia are still stronger overall (due to having established Scrabble for young people many years ago), there are a group of young Filipino players ready to take on the world over the next five years. I played 5 of them at the end of the training program (simultaneously - but I was playing “hard”) and 4 of them came close to winning. Kim Rubina had 3 bonuses – fortunately my triple-triple through one of those was enough to see me win by 25. Then I had to concentrate hard on the remaining 3 games. I managed to win two of these – although Joy had me worried. Angelica was too strong - in recognition of her prowess, I presented her with the rotating board on which she won. It is good to see a significant number of their young players are girls, unlike other countries. Prizes were presented to the top 5 (after the final quiz) and the only boy was Roel. The youngest prizewinner was Yani (aged 8).
The main problem was language difficulties – they are used to an American accent, not the Aussie accent – so I relied heavily on Nene Lambino and Pion Kotico for translation to their native tongue. Martus (winner of Causeway Open 2008) assisted by demonstrating how to play well, encouraging the children etc. It was great to catch up with Charles Cue, who competed in the first WYSC (2006, Australia) currently studying at a nearby university.
After the two-day workshop, we enjoyed a two-day tournament. There were separate tournaments for adults and children, because this was the qualifying tournament for the WYSC09 team. It is satisfying to see them getting their team selected so early, thereby allowing time to further train these particular youngsters. The tournament was sponsored by Mattel, in a large shopping mall (they have heaps of large shopping malls in the Philippines - shoppers heaven!) It reminded me of Kings Cup, with a constant stream of loud music and advertising noise, spectators etc. The strains of the Toy-R-Us ad, (see above), is still blasting though my head (an earworm!) – my theme song, perhaps? It was a great tournament, with the likes of Marlon and Odette competing. I chuckled at the sight of the two winners, Joy (Youth) and Martus (Open), carrying monstrous trophies as they left to fly back to Cebu - they would have been great ambassadors for Scrabble on the flight home!
NASCAP (President, Robin Rubina) has invited me back next year, to run both an advanced and beginners workshop in Cebu (with my son Alastair), so I suppose they felt that it was worthwhile. Oh, and they will probably want me to try their specialty dish, Balut - which I resisted successfully this time (don’t ask!)
Apart from visiting an active volcano in a picturesque rural area, I was given a tour of Manila Bay, where NASCAP are bidding to host WYSC10. Their preferred hotel is still under construction, but is located adjacent to the biggest mall in Asia – well, it WAS the biggest until the Chinese found out, and built a larger one! It includes an ice-skating rink, IMAX theatre, and just about everything in between. Outside, on the shore of the bay, is a children’s playground - an ideal spot for a WYSC, as long as the players (or their parents) don’t get lost in the shopping mall.
Karen Richards
Chair, Youth Committee
WESPA (World English-language Scrabble Players Association)