Chess is cool at Shrewsbury’s Spring Street School
Monday, April 9, 2012
By Amy Corneliussen
CORRESPONDENT
SHREWSBURY — It’s a Friday afternoon at Spring Street School and more than one-quarter of the students are staying after school to exercise their brains.
They’re not doing schoolwork, but the exercises may help these kids do better on standardized tests someday. Most important, they’re having fun.
What drew them here is a meeting of the Spring Street School Chess Club. With 107 members, it is perhaps the largest chess club in New England, according to chess master Lou Mercuri.
Somehow, chess has become cool at Spring Street School.
“I marvel at the fact, when I drive up to the school, that it’s got one out of four students in the chess program,” says Mercuri, who coaches first- through fourth-graders at Spring Street.
One recent Friday, the club ended its season with a simultaneous chess match in which all 107 girls and boys played against Mr. Mercuri at the same time.
The cafeteria tables are arranged in a giant rectangle with 35 chess boards set up.
Once school gets out, students start pouring in, jockeying for boards and teammates. The kids have to team up — two or three to a board — so they all have a chance to play against the chess master.
“It’s going to get loud in here,” warns parent organizer Steve Bird.
The volume rises as the 3:15 p.m. start time draws near.
Mr. Mercuri drinks some water and rubs his face, surveying the room as he prepares for this marathon tournament.
For the next hour-plus, he will walk laps around the inside of the rectangle of tables, moving the white pieces on each board as quickly as possible as he plays a full game with all of his students.
He figures that he can spend about five seconds per move, totaling at least two minutes of playing time on each board.
“If I take more than five seconds on a move, you know something is up,” Mr. Mercuri says.
This year, there’s talk that some of the fourth-grade boys may be able to beat the master.
In the last few years, playing two simultaneous matches a year, Mr. Mercuri has been beaten only twice.
Full article here.
What’s his rating?