Jay Stallings and the CYCL

Jay Stallings (www.CYCL.org)
By Jim Holt Signal Staff Writer
Tuesday September 11, 2007

Armed with a small army and centuries-old military tactics, Jay Stallings wages war every day.
Stallings, director of the nonprofit California Youth Chess League, has become the chess guru of Valencia.
The kids call him Coach Jay.
The 64-box checkered chess board appears to be as much a part of his family’s blood as his 42-chromosome genetic code.
His father, Charles, was a chess champion and so is his youngest son, Jackson.
Jay Stallings, himself, ranked third best chess champion in the entire United States in 1977.
And, for the last 15 years, he’s been sharing his knowledge and insight with hundreds of elementary school children in the Santa Clarita Valley.
“Children who play chess grow up to problem-solve,” he said Monday from his home-run office on Via Nautica. “They whine less and think more.”
Stallings, 41, grew up in Texas and worked in a restaurant there before moving to Valencia in 1992. While at the restaurant he met, and later married, Michelle, a young woman who worked there.
Shortly after the couple moved to Valencia, Michelle suggested Jay teach chess.
“When the movie ‘Searching For Bobbie Fischer’ came out, she said ‘everybody is going to want their kids to play chess, you should teach chess,” he said.
On Jan. 21, 1994, less than a year after the movie’s release, Stallings taught his first chess class in the community room at Westfield Valencia Town Center.
“That was four days after the Northridge earthquake. I had placed an ad in The Signal and I had 35 people sign up. But 27 showed up, because for some, their houses were wrecked,” he said.
The fledgling CYCL had to find a new home when the Red Cross set up in the mall’s community room.
Then, Stallings played the gutsiest chess move of his life. He quit his job as a computer printer salesman and decided to teach chess, supplementing his income initially by working as a supply teacher with the Saugus Unified School District.
And, again, as in chess, one bold move provokes another.
In 1996, he packed up his chess board and his wee black and white chess pieces and took his venture full-time by declaring his chess group a nonprofit organization.
The move permitted him to teach chess inside local schools and allowed him access for federal grant money.
As chess moves go, this proved to be one of Stallings’ best.
He now teaches chess to hundreds of kids at 18 local schools.

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