Sozonov Award

Award named after Evgeniy Sozonov is a private national annual award. It was established by Olena Boytsun in 2013 with the aim of supporting talented children aged between 10 to 16 years old, who show good results in both chess and school studies.

The award was founded in memory of Evgeniy Sozonov (1936–2011), candidate to master in chess, who was Olena’s grandfather and the first chess trainer.

«My grandfather not only taught me how to play chess, he showed me how interesting and big the world is, and how important it is to constantly learn and discover new things. He always noted the importance of all-round and harmonious development for young chess players, which was the main motivation for me to start the award.

It is also important for the Chess for Children foundation to emphasise the value of the first trainer for the development of a young chess player, because these memories last a lifetime»

Founder of the Sozonov Award
WIM Olena Boytsun

In the period from 2013 to 2024, the Chess for Children Foundation held a competition for the Sozonov Award for 10 times. During this period, 290 applications were submitted for the award and 202 children participated, including 136 boys and 66 girls. Since under the terms of the competition it is possible to repeatedly participate in the selection, 56 children took part in the competition more than once: 35 children became participants twice, 14 children participated three times, 6 children submitted questionnaires four times and 1 person participated in the competition five times.

Children from all regions of Ukraine took part in the competition, the largest percentage of participants came from the city of Kyiv and the Kyiv region –26%,14% were from the Lviv region, and 7% each from Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions. As for the age category, the age group under 10 years included 31% of participants, 11 years –19%, 12 years –17%, 13 years –13%, 14 years – 6%, 15 years – 8%, 16 years – 6%.

In 2013, 38 children took part in the competition, in 2014 – 30 children, in 2015 – 29 children, in 2016 – 29 children, in 2019 – 28 children, in 2020 – 22 children, in 2021 – 32 children, in 2022 – 29 children, in 2023 – 27 children and in 2024 – 26 children.

Since the launch of the Sozonov Award, 17 children (11 boys and 6 girls) have become the winners of the competition. Until 2019, the Award was given to one winner in the general category from 10 to 15 years, since 2019 two age categories (10-13 years and 14-16 years) have been separated. The Sozonov Award for 2022 was awarded to 4 co-winners (2 co-winners in each age category). One participant won the contest twice: in 2020 and 2022.

The largest number of winners represented the city of Kyiv – 6 people, Kharkiv region – 2 people, Donetsk region – 2 people, Ivano-Frankivsk region – 2 people and the winners were 1 representative each from Dnipro, Zhytomyr, Zakarpattia, Lviv and Poltava regions.

Among the winners, 65% are the boys and 35% are the girls.

The Foundation encourages the participants of the competition of previous years to take part in the competition next year and does not set any restrictions in this regard. The selection uses a balanced system that takes into account both achievements in chess and the results of studies.