Ivana leads largest Goan team for Nationals

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).