Jiayou! The Nanyang kings: Among Singapore’s top primary school chess brains
Contributed by Olimpiu G. Urcan
On a Monday morning of the new school term, Estelle Lee, a P4 pupil in Nanyang Primary School, bought her fish noodle, gulped it down quickly, washed her hands, and walked speedily towards the chess corner located nearby the school’s canteen.
There, for the next ten minutes, Estelle immersed herself in complicated minutia evolving on the chess board while playing against one of the noisier boys around. Just before the bell rang, she checkmated the opponent’s king. Following this sudden demise of his plastic monarch, the boy ran upstairs while Estelle shook her head smiling and arranged the pieces back in the drawer. She washed her hands one more time and then departed to her next class: Math.
Estelle became interested in chess a couple of years ago, but she seldom engaged in chess competitions outside school. Her mother told the teachers that Estelle reads a lot about the game at home and loves to play against anyone. The fact that Nanyang has a great chess culture and Estelle can easily find good players to spar against pleases her daughter, Mrs. Lee commented over the phone.
Bringing up “scholastic chess”, one instantly thinks of USA or UK where chess-in-schools got a rapid advent in the last decade or so. But things are not much different in Singapore, even though the chess-in-schools movement (sanctioned by FIDE and SCF) in this country unfolds in almost in complete silence.
Chess is taught as a CCA/enrichment course/Club activity in over 80 primary schools, a dozen secondary schools, colleges and universities. Nanyang Primary School is the top primary school when it comes to chess competitions. The NYPS Chess Club was founded in 2001 by a group of enthusiastic parents. In that year the membership rolls showed 20 active members. Between 2001 and 2008, the school club’s membership climbed to over 200 active members. Yearly its members took part in national, regional and world level competitions. In these 7 years, the coffers of the club collected 100 medals earned at national and international level (46 Gold, 34 Silver, and 20 Bronze). A detailed history of the club’s achievements can be read here.
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Nice job.
Congrats for a great piece of work.
Good piece written there Mr Olympiu.
Singapore chess really needs a shot in the arm particularly after the chess academies have suffered so much. Due to the economic downturn almost all the foreign chess coach have left Singapore which is a serious blow to chess developement in Singapore.
Hopefully in time we can pick up the pieces and restore Singapore chess to what it once was.
Which coaches left Singapore? There are, in fact, so many, one can hardly keep track of all of them. The downturn is no more.