Tourney bars chess team
Ray Parker
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 24, 2007 12:00 AM
The kids proved to be champions last year.
But a team of homeschooled students from the Southeast Valley, called the Chevalier Noir (Black Knight) Academy, was shut out last weekend from competing in the Arizona Scholastic State Chess Championship in Tucson.
State chess officials had allowed the homeschooled students to play as teams for two years because of changing or unclear national rules on the subject. This year, they ruled team members must come from the same school.
“The tournaments were created and designed for school teams,” said Will Wharton, president of the Arizona Chess Federation board. “The problem is their connection is just chess. They’re not doing any schooling together.”
Homeschool proponents look at the chess world as way behind the times, especially since public education has changed so much with charter and magnet schools, which take students from all over, as do private and parochial schools.
Here is the full article.
It’s a real shame that the chess organizers do not recognize homeschooled kids. The fact of the matter is that there are over a million children being homeschooled in the United States. Colleges and universities are waking to this pool of applicants and are increasingly welcoming outstanding homeschooled high schoolers and accommodating them in the application process.
Poor kids!
ringers
The revised USCF scholastic regulations allow a homeschooled child to play for his neighborhood school that he would normally attend.
In the case of Arizona, the kids from the “homeschooled team” attend schools in different cities, let alone different school districts. Clearly the USCF regulations impose some geographic restrictions.
This is equivalent to the students at an after-school chess club. In California, we have the AAA Chess Club in Los Angeles and the Mechanics’ Institute in San Francisco. Many of the top kids are members of these clubs, but they can’t represent the clubs at the state championship.
I have two grand children being home schooled and am very sympathetic to not only allowing home school teams of various connections to participate but also doing what is done at the Amateur Team Championships- helping as much as possible in organizing teams. The truth is playing on a team of any nature is invaluable in the social development of many home schoolers.
Don Schultz
This is a shame. These kids, by choice of their parents for the most part, are home schooled. This is about the kids and AZ did not take this into consideration it seems and have left out a critical group of scholars.
I guess, next year, they will all need to enroll in the contest as a team from each home. Siblings would really love that!
Maybe the other schools are afraid of “ringers”. Or maybe, home schooled kids are nurtured from more angles than public school kids so they are naturally smarter.
I say, let them compete. If you don’t like it, then teach the other kids better and beat them. That’s motivation. Else, let them come in and put on a good show and become champs again!
Let’s see, they won last year…Hmm certainly smells like sour grapes. The home schoolers in our area do lots of different thing together. Sounds like the Arizona Dark Ages Chess Federation needs to awake to the Postmodern world they find themselves in.
How lame. You devalue your own kids experience if you don’t let them play the best players. Whose idea was it to keep kids from playing chess?
At the very least they could have entered as individuals. My son was the sole representive from his school. He would have loved to round up a group of his friends from a variety of schools who were under-represented and put together an all-star team, but that wouldn’t exactly be fair now would it? The concept of a school team trophy is school teams, not club teams. If there is a club team state championship then have at it. But until then let’s abide by the USCF rules.