At Oregon state chess tournament, a queen among legion of knights
13-year-old Mary Dang is one of Oregon’s top-ranked female players in an activity
Friday, March 16, 2007
SCOTT LEARN
When Mary Dang breathes deeply, calms her nerves and sits for her first match at the Oregon state chess tournament Saturday, odds are she’ll face a boy.
That, the 13-year-old says with a characteristic smile, is not a problem.
Some girls think they can’t beat the boys, she acknowledges. “But I’ve been playing with my brother since he started,” she says. “I’ve been playing against older boys and teachers. And I’ve played with some girls, but not a lot.”
As a Portland eighth-grader, Dang stands among the state’s highest-ranking girls, says Julie Young, executive director of Portland-based Chess for Success, which organizes the tournament.
Girls make up nearly 40 percent of the participants in the Chess for Success’s after-school programs, Young says, an unusually high number. The program works through teachers, including many women, Young notes, helping promote chess among girls.
But girls are still rare at the top ranks.
“Girls, they want to become popular,” Dang says. “They don’t want to be a geek or something playing chess. Boys, they don’t really care.”
Here is the full story.
Long newspaper article about a girl who is the 133rd highest rated (997) 8th grader in Oregon…(yawn).
Correction: Dang is the 31st highest 8th grader in Oregon (133rd in the northwest).
I can’t seem to find her in the USCF ratings list. I also looked in the top 100 girls U16 list and she isn’t there. Looked under Oct.’s U13 list just in case she was 12 then and still nada. But as Dan here points out, she’s not rated high enough for them.
Is her name Mary or is that a nickname?
She might not be a USCF member at all. In the northwest, there are a bunch of scholastic tournaments that are not USCF rated. Instead, an alternative northwest rating system (NWSRS) is used. No membership fees are required and it is very easy for TDs to set up tournaments. As a result, scholastic chess life in the northwest seems to be booming. Mary Dang’s NWSRS rating is 997, which is 31st for Oregon 8th graders.
You can check out the NWSRS and Oregon Scholastic Chess Federation details at oscf.org. They really have struck on a good formula for promoting chess–easy for TDs, easy to register, easy for kids, easy for data, inexpensive (no registration charge, small fee for rating games).