Fighting for the children

Chess star looks to get local team to national tournament

April 15,2006
Kaitlin Bell
Monitor Staff Writer, Texas

An international chess champion and world record holder is taking a Sharyland elementary student chess team under her wing, hoping to use her influence to convince the local school board and superintendent to scrap rules prohibiting younger children from competing out-of-state.

Chess Grandmaster Susan Polgar promised Friday to donate money and lobby district officials on behalf of Jensen Elementary’s chess team. Officials barred the team two weeks ago from attending a national tournament in Colorado because of a district practice that doesn’t allow junior high and elementary students to travel out of state on a school trip.

Although just nine members of several dozen on the team had been practicing for the national tournament in May, their cause attracted broader sympathy when parents spoke out against the ban at a school board meeting three weeks ago.

Just weeks before, team members netted a first-place finish in their division at the Texas Scholastic Championships, placing them in a good position to perform well at the open tournament in Denver, parents and coaches argued.

Polgar, a four-time women’s world champion and five-time Chess Olympics champion, said she learned of the team’s predicament through a Google News alert.

“It’s more a symbolic token,” Polgar said of her $250 pledge, “But it’s a voice to the school district that they should support chess … they shouldn’t discriminate between the different grades. I’m very passionate about changing this one district at a time.”

Polgar’s background hints at why she believes neither age nor geography nor gender should inhibit of chess successes. Born in Hungary, she took up the game at age 4 and by age 15 was ranked the No. 1 woman player in the world.

Now based in New York, she travels the country to promote girls’ involvement in the game through talks and national tournaments her private foundation runs.

School Board member Juan Zuniga, one of several officials charged with drafting official guidelines governing travel to next year’s out-of-state competitions, said he thinks Polgar’s involvement — however small her monetary donation — could tip the balance toward a policy change for next year.

“No shouldn’t be an answer. It wasn’t the right answer this time,” Zuniga said. “It’s not about the money; it’s about having the policy in place.”

Zuniga urged Polgar to contact Superintendent Scott Owings if she wants to wield maximum influence.

Owings first nixed the team’s Colorado plans in February and stuck firmly to his position after consulting with board members after the parents’ appeal, saying it wasn’t fair to change practices mid-year. District offices were closed Friday, and Owings did not return messages seeking comment.

The district earlier this year allocated about $30,000 to expand Jensen’s chess program to other schools, a decision officials said they based mostly on the three-year-old team’s string of successes.

Several parents and Jensen Elementary Principal Margarita O. Gonzalez spoke highly of Polgar as a role model.

The national champion hosted a national open invitational girls’ competition in Corpus Christi earlier this year — one that a Jensen girls’ team took a top finish in, too.

“I think that it’s exciting that somebody at that level would take an interest in our little school and would be willing to do something for our students,” said Amy Albrecht, a gym teacher at Jensen whose daughter, Kaitlyn, attended Polgar’s tournament and would have gone to Colorado in May.