District 16

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By Scott Nason

D16 GNT Coordinator

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Flights A & C

The first two flights – A and C – were completed in Houston on April 5/6 and discussed previously. In Flight A, the Hanus team (Pawel Hanus, Ari Sippola, James Zahn and Ying Peng) won, while in Flight C, the Xu team (Wei Xu, Ryo Chen, Kai Liu, Jinrong Wang) emerged victorious. 

The other two flights were competed in Dallas on May 2-3.

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Championship Flight

The Championship Flight had four entries, the biggest field since before Covid. On the first day, a round robin reduced the field to two teams with the Dinkin team from Austin/Houston/San Antonio (Sam Dinkin, Finn Kolesnik, Greg Hinze, Bob Morris, and Venkat Koneru) facing off against the Houston-based Wheeler team (Sally Wheeler, Buddy Hanby, Jack LaVigne, Thomas Rush).

In the Finals, the Dinkin team won handily.

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Flight B

In Flight B, there were seven teams, one shy of the number required to qualify two teams for Nationals. The seven teams played a round robin, reducing the field to four for the semi-final KOs.

The top qualifier, the Litwin from Austin (Stuart Litwin, Anita Albert, Jarek Langer, Benjamin Klauder) lost its KO to another Austin team, Jaeger (Phillip Jaeger, Thomas Hackenberg, Linda Griffith, Frank Floca). The third qualifier, the Dallas-based Remmers team (Dale and Valerie Remmers, Bob Holliday, Mary Lynn Genovesi) defeated the Houston/Dallas Jinna team (Hasin Jinna, Suvabrata Biswas, Elaine Wood, Vijay Vasudivan).

In an exciting final, the Jaeger team came back on the final three boards to overtake Remmers and earn the win. 

Each winning team receives a $2400 expenses stipend and the D16 invite to the Nationals in Philadelphia in July.