![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/0f03b226-b190-4193-adf3-75653af6e0ce.jpg\")
<\/p>\nMaryna and a number of other students from the school qualified for the competition, which was held in Nenagh, thanks to their success in an inter-schools chess competition held at Col\u00e1iste \u00cdde agus Iosef in Abbeyfeale in April.<\/p>\n
The chess whiz received a fantastic welcome back to the school this week, with staff and fellow students lining the entrance and hallways and applauding her achievement.<\/p>\n
Principal of Col\u00e1iste Gleann L\u00ed, Charlie O\u2019Doherty, spoke to The Kerryman after Maryna\u2019s win was announced and said he was understandably delighted by her success.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s amazing. It\u2019s amazing for the work that she\u2019s put in herself and also for the staff in the school. There are not many times that you can say, as a principal of a school, that you have a student who is an All-Ireland champion. We are just over the moon with her win,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a chess club in the school and we have some very good staff who do an awful lot of work with it. There are a lot of sports out there and a lot of schools that focus on them, so we have to identify what is right for us and where our strengths lie. Chess is big for us and it\u2019s paid off.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaryna is just over the moon. She really puts in the work, going to competitions all over the place, so she\u2019s very involved in the chess world,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Col\u00e1iste Gleann L\u00ed students who took part in the recent All-Ireland chess tournament up in Nenagh. Pictured are: Declan Stokoe, Maryna Petrenko, Mikhail Kadsai, Kostya Dievochkain, Irena Petrenko and Arseniis Ooly. Photo by Fergus Dennehy.<\/p>\n
As for Maryna herself, The Kerryman chatted to her at the school on Friday morning and, aside from revealing that she has been playing for the last 10 years, since she was seven years old, this is what she had to say about her win:<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m delighted because it was a very strong tournament and stressful for me. There were a lot of people there who have already played in major tournaments in Ireland, such as the Irish Championships, so the standard was very high.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs it was a school tournament as well as a team tournament, it was very important to show that our school is great and that we are trying to develop our skills, not just in chess but in everything else as well,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
On what keeps drawing her to chess and helping her hone her skills, Maryna said there is so much to enjoy about the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like the geometry of the board. It looks like art to me. I like trying to figure out the tactics in every game and how to defend your king from your opponent\u2019s pieces. You develop a lot of skills the more you play. I just really like it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In a school where chess continues to flourish \u2013 The efforts of the other students who made it to the finals in Nenagh should not be forgotten \u2013 Maryna Petrenko has firmly placed herself among its brightest success stories to date.<\/p>\n
For Col\u00e1iste Gleann L\u00ed, it was a winning move worth celebrating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maryna and a number of other students from the school qualified for the competition, which was held in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14639,61,60,188428,43],"class_list":["post-453188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-fergus-dennehy","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kerry-life","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}