Marikina dominates BPinoy chess

MANILA, Philippines - Marikina City’s Carlo Caranyagan bagged four gold medals in chess yesterday to highlight the host city’s strong showing even as Jesca Docena swept all her three events in the ladies side at the close of the Batang Pinoy National Capital Region qualifying leg at the Marikina Sports Center in Marikina yesterday.

Caranyagan, a 14-year-old high school student at Arellano U, topped the individual rapid and standard events and anchored Marikina’s rapid and standard teams gold medal romp to emerge the winningest player in the event with four golds.

He, however, missed scoring a five-gold sweep after settling for fourth in the blitz event, bowing to eventual gold medal winner Melwyn Kenneth Baltazar of Caloocan, a high school sophomore of recently crowned NCAA juniors champion Letran.

“I’m happy to win here in my home city,” said Caranyagan, who lives in Tumana, Concepcion II and whose coach is National Master Rudy Ibanez, in Filipino.

Docena, an 11-year-old competing in a 15-and-under event, ruled all the three individual events in standard, rapid and blitz for Pasay City’s only medals.

Docena, whose elder sister Jedara was a member of the women’s team that recently competed in the World Chess Olympiad in Turkey, swept the blitz division in five games, scored 4.5 points in standard then edged Makati’s Alexis Charlotte Suede and Fracois Marie Magpily via tiebreak to clinch the rapid gold.

Caranyagan and Docena, who are also scheduled to play in today’s finals of the Shell Youth Active Chess at SM Megamall, thus gain berths in the Batang Pinoy national finals set Dec. 5-8 in Iloilo City.

In girls volleyball, which already held its national finals, Pangasinan fought back from two sets down to stun Rizal, 15-25, 21-25, 25-15, 26-24, 15-10, and cop the gold medal.

Makati walloped Pasay, 25-10, 25-17, for the bronze.

Also heading for the national finals are Manila’s Vincent Nabong and Quezon City’s Kristen Chloe Daos and Raissa Gavino, who dominated the five-day meet organized by the Philippine Sports Commission as part of its talent-search.

Nabong, a San Sebastian high school standout, harvested five gold medals in athletics to lead the Big City charge while Daos and Gavino reigned in the pool with a six-gold haul apiece.

Gavino, in particular, set a new standard in 100m breaststroke with a one-minute, 20.83-second clocking, besting the 1:22.53 set by Maurize Dabi of Calapan, Mindoro last year. Her 10:23.03 mark in newly introduced 800m automatically became the meet’s standard.

Other new record holders were Regina Castrillo of Manila, and QC’s Jeremy Lim. Castrillo, who won four golds in swimming, broke the 13-under 100m butterfly mark with a time of 1:08.97, erasing Laguna’s Catherine Bondad’s 1:09.18 set last year.

Lim bagged four golds in swimming, setting a new mark in the 15-under 50m free of 25.84 seconds, improving the previous best of 26.16 seconds recorded by Jethro Chua of Laguna last year.