Recapping the 2023 Texas CSW State Championship
What's the true state pastime down in Texas? Off the top of your head, you might guess high school football, and you'd have good reason to think that. But you'd be wrong! The real game in the Lone Star State is played not with pigskin, but with Protiles. It's all about the Scrabble - and CSW Scrabble in particular.
OK, maybe none of that is actually true. But still, there's a thriving community of Scrabblers down in Texas, and this past weekend, they converged upon their capital city of Austin for the first annual Texas CSW State Championship. Six players duked it out over 13 games each to determine the state's best. Some were Austin locals; others came from elsewhere around the state. Still others came from as far away as California or even Sierra Leone. But all competed for the title of Texan champion - and in the end, only one could win.
Here's director Jesse Day to recap all the action:
Texas has a long history of state Scrabble championships, but to my knowledge, this is the first time we've crowned a Collins champion. It wound up being an intimate but high-level affair, with six of our finest Texas-affiliated lexicographers coming together to compete for the brass boot. After eight games, it was mathematically inevitable that the champion would be either New Orleans' Austin Shin (a Houston Texans fan) or Dallas' Rasheed Balogun. At the conclusion of the round robin, Rasheed was a game up with only one loss, but Austin rattled off three big wins in a row to take the trophy back to Louisiana. He's promised to give us another crack at returning the trophy to Texas next year.
There were several other fine prizes on offer, which we determined by vote. Texan-turned-Californian David Whitley took home a brass postcard of Texas by playing the best Texas word, TACOS. Arguably his other plays like PECAN and BOWIE were even more Texan, but everybody loves tacos, and his opponent even noted that it was a strong play on a tight board. Emmanuel King put the field on notice by immediately notching a near-600 point win over the top seed (me) and finished in third place, winning a wooden roadrunner carving for best performance.
Thank you to the Texas community for embracing this tournament, and we'll see you next year!
Indeed! Thanks to Jesse for running a successful state championship event, and congrats to Austin on taking home the title. I'm already excited to see this event come back even bigger and better next year.