Catalina Foothills Captures State Chess Championship

TUCSON, AZ — There are three consistencies in Southern Arizona: death, taxes and Catalina Foothills competing for a state championship in chess.

The third and final addition to the age-old adage may be a bit of a stretch, but speaks to the consistency that has been established by longtime CFHS chess coach, Robby Adamson.

Adamson, who has coached the Falcons' chess team since 2004, won his 15th state chess title, with the latest coming against on April 24 against longtime rival, Chandler Hamilton High School, in an all-virtual state final match.

The longtime coach watched from afar as the Falcons managed to knock off Hamilton, despite being outranked on all five boards.

Instead of wilting under pressure, the Falcons' quintet of chess aficionados, in Quinn Hudson, Jonathan Martinez, Matthew Coy, Pranav Iyer and Max Coy, turned the tables and won the match, bringing another Arizona Interscholastic Association State Team Chess Championship to Southern Arizona.

Adamson called his team's ability to win the two-day, 24-team tournament, which was all played on a virtually on chess.com, as one of the greatest feats he's been part of in his 17-year run at the school.

"It was a very unique process, because this was a new format for many of them," Adamson said of the all-online state tournament. "None of the kids have ever done organized tournaments online before. So it was a learning process for the entire state, frankly."

Adamson said the final match against Hamilton was a fitting finale, given the two schools have now faced off in four-straight championship round matches.

"If everything goes right, we expect to play them and they expect to play us, but there are a lot of other good teams, too," Adamson said. "It's been a dramatic finish almost every time that we've played. I think every time it's come down to the last game, or the second-to-last game, deciding the match."

Adamson said he prepared his team on Friday night based on the colors he thought his players would get, based on how the pairings usually play out in past events.

That preparation went out the window the next morning, however, when Adamson and company realized the tournament's organizers had flipped CFHS and Hamilton's colors, forcing the team to readjust on the fly.

The match with Hamilton wound up turning on the board three, Adamson said, with Coy holding the line and securing the win for the Falcons.

It's that steadfast confidence and grit that stands out to Adamson, who called the 2020-21 Falcons collective one of the most mentally tough teams he's ever coached.

"What I'll remember most about this team is that we won a state championship following a pandemic, when it was harder to keep the kids interested because they knew they had no in-person tournaments to play in," Adamson said.

"I'll also never forget the rivalry that we've had with Hamilton these last four years, and the fact that we were severely outranked, by U.S. Chess' rating at least, on all five matchups. We were underdogs on all five games."

Adamson and the Falcons turned around and faced off against 37 other schools from across the country in the 2021 National Online Scholastic Championship, a national chess championship for high schools.

The Falcons placed fifth in that competition, behind two New York high schools and high schools from Virginia and Texas.

Adamson said that having his team overcome such long odds to knock off Hamilton, then place as high as they did nationally, stands among the greatest moments of his coaching career.

"In my coaching career, I've never really been an underdog like that before, because we've been so successful," Adamson said. "Not to that extreme. And so it was really great for our kids to come together and win it all."