Everybody wants to be the next Vishy!
By Express News Service – CHENNAI
Published: 07th November 2013 08:55 AM
Last Updated: 07th November 2013 08:56 AM
If the World Chess Championship fever has begun to make its presence felt in the city, it is at the city’s numerous schools that the excitement has reached fever-pitch. Thanks to a slew of programmes organised to augment the chess championship – be it the State level chess championship that saw lakhs of students participate or the training sessions and awareness campaigns conducted, the game seems to have caught on in the city like never before.
“Students take out their chess boards and start playing even during lunch breaks! They are taking up the game during leisure hours too. This is all completely new,” said Peter Reddy, district inspector of Physical Education for Chennai.
“The main aim behind propagating Chess was to create an interest in the game. When it comes to games like Basketball or Football, students see the games and are automatically hooked. But for Chess, they need to play it to get interested. That was the challenge. But once the students took to it, there was no stopping them,” he said.
This year, the State level chess championship for school students was extended to seven levels, starting with the intra-school level. Over 11 lakh students participated in the championship. The increased interest is also evident with the number of students participating in the weekly events organised by chess associations, said members of the associations.
“Till last year, we would get something like 350 entries for a weekly chess match. Now it is over 500. In major matches too, earlier it used to be around 800 entries. Now we get over 1000,” said K Ganesan, Secretary, Chennai District Chess Association.
Parents and teachers too seemed eager to participate. “In the training programme for TET teachers, around 3000 teachers participated from across the State. Once they learnt the game, it was easy for them to conduct chess matches in the schools themselves,” he said. He added that thanks to the effort, students from economically weaker sections were playing too.
The Chess Association of India is also conducting training programmes for selected school students in the age group of 11-17 in Chennai Schools. “This made Chess into a game that everyone can play. Earlier, it used be a closed, elite game that only a handful of students from private schools participated. Now for the first time, students from government schools are participating and winning medals in national level matches. We hope there will be a big increase in these numbers in the next three years,” said Reddy.
Source: http://newindianexpress.com
Vishy is the best.