University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Wins 2025 Pan-American Intercollegiate Championships in Charlotte

The University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley A-team (UTRGV-A) took clear first at the 2025 Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Championships (Pan-Ams) with a perfect 6/6 score. The tournament was hosted by the Charlotte Chess Center (CCC) and held from January 2 through 6 at the University Place Hilton in Charlotte, North Carolina.

UTRGV-A entered with the third-highest average rating (2606) and three GMs on their five-player roster. GMs Viktor Gazik, Gleb Dudin, and Shawn Rodrigue-Lemieux were joined by IMs Juraj Druska and Irakli Beradze on boards two and four.

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UTRGV-A (All photos courtesy of Kelly Centrelli/CCC)

With top-seeded Mizzou losing a fourth-round match against Texas Tech’s A-team, UTRGV-A’s only match against a higher-rated team came in round 5 against second-seeded Webster-A. After draws on the top three boards, the pivotal match came down to Rodrigue-Lemieux’s win over GM Emilio Cordova on board 4. The Canadian 20-year-old’s victory over the Peruvian 33-year-old was a nice encapsulation of the Pan-American spirit of the tournament!

This was UTRGV’s second time winning the Pan-Ams, coming a full decade after the university’s first championship in 2015. UTRGV-A finished a full point ahead of University of Texas at Dallas’s B-team (UTD-B), which finished clear second with a 5/6 score.

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UTD-B finished clear second, ahead of UTD-A!

The A-teams from Saint Louis University (SLU-A) and Webster University tied for third with 4½/6. The top four teams qualify for the President’s Cup, fittingly leaving a pair of Texas and a pair of Missouri teams set to vie for top honors later this year. Perhaps more importantly, UTRGV will hopefully be recognized on a notorious college football subreddit's list of non-NCAA national champions.

Seven teams (including UTD-A) tied for fifth with 4/6 scores, including UTD-A and the defending champions from the University of Missouri (Mizzou), which entered as the highest-rated team in the field with an average rating of 2653. All results from the Open are available here.

UTD-B managed to leapfrog UTD-A in the standings thanks to its last-round victory over Stanford University in the final round, thanks to GM Ivan Schitco’s win over Stanford’s IM Carissa Yip on board three:

That same round, UTD-A succumbed to UTRGV-A in a contested 2½–1½ match that came down to the final seconds of the clash on the top board:

This was CCC’s second time hosting the Pan-Ams, and first since 2019. Since then, the Pan-Ams have added an Under-1800 section to encourage the participation of more teams.

In the Under-1800 section, University of Cincinnati won first on tiebreaks ahead of University of Texas at Austin-B and New York University, which finished second and third, respectively, on tiebreaks. All three teams finished with 5/6 scores. Full results for this section are available here.

This year, the tournament boasted 91 total teams (44 in the Open and 47 in the Under-1800) and a total of 385 players.

In contrast, the one-section 2019 event featured 63 teams, which was at the time the largest Pan-Ams since 1982. Both the 2019 and 2025 tournaments featured exactly ten teams with average ratings over 2500, speaking again to how the inclusion of an Under-1800 section has increased participation from a broader range of colleges and universities.

This broader range was best represented by University of Washington’s A-team, which won a plaque in the Under-1800 section as the top Division VI team (under-1400 average rating) by finishing in a tie for seventh with a 4/6 score with an average rating of 1317. For context, the next lowest-rated team to finish with a 4/6 score had an average rating of 1691. Howard University was the highest-finishing Division V team (1400-1599 average rating), as the only eligible team to finish with a 3½/6 score.

In the Open, the Division II (2000-2199) and Division III (1800-1999) prizes went to UTD-D and University of Toronto’s B-team, respectively. University of Toronto’s A-team also won recognition for the top-scoring international team. Webster University’s B-team — boasting a 2300 average rating — won the prize for top all-female team, led by IM Anna Sargsyan on the top board.

Over half of the participants competed in the Pan-American Blitz Championships, as well, with 98 players in the Open section and another 94 in the Under-1800 section. Northwestern University’s FM Dachey Lin took clear first in the Open with a 6/6 score, while GM Harshit Raja of Mizzou led the six players tied for second-through-seventh on tiebreaks. In the Under-1800 Blitz, Jainil Trivedi of Arizona State University’s B-team took first place on tiebreaks ahead of Utah-B’s Solon Grover on tiebreaks. Results are available here for the Open and here for the Under-1800.