Queens of the board
Local girls who excel in chess help boys learn and will compete in a girls’ tourney Jan. 27-29
By Mike Baird Caller Times
January 12, 2006
Just as queens have more powerful moves in chess than kings, Corpus Christi girls are dominating chess circles, but they’re sharing their winning moves with aspiring boys.
Central Catholic School student Georgia Olvera, 8, adjusted her glasses, slid a bishop across the board and nabbed Carlitos Gonzalez’s rook (castle). Olvera beat her 10-year-old opponent, a student at Evans Elementary School, but Gonzalez didn’t mind, because Olvera won five trophies and 15 medals this past summer in competition, while he’s just getting started in the strategic game.
These are two of the members of a chess center, spawned in May with support from world champion chess grandmaster Susan Polgar. A New York resident originally from Hungary, Polgar lent her name to the center after seeing a tremendous interest in chess from dozens of girls during an April fundraiser for St. Patrick’s Elementary Chess Team.
“I invited Polgar to come,” said Dan DeLeon, one-time coach for St. Patrick’s team and now director of Susan Polgar South Texas Chess Center at 918 Antelope St. “She fell in love with Corpus Christi and now we’re co-hosting a girl’s national championship with the Susan Polgar Foundation.”
About 60 local schoolgirls will compete Jan. 27-29 in the Susan Polgar National Open Championships for girls under 21, being held at the Ramada Inn’s convention center. By Monday 176 girls were registered from 13 states to vie for three national champion positions – girl’s chess champ; blitz (a 5-minute game) champ; and chess puzzle-solving champ. Each winner will get a Dell computer and printer.
Standing is based on ratings from previous performances in U.S. Chess Federation sanctioned competition, not age, DeLeon said.
Most of the local grade schools with chess teams or clubs are magnet schools with high-academic achievement, he said, but the center’s popularity is spilling into all schools.
“We’re taking anyone under our wing who’s interested,” DeLeon said. The center recently gave students at Evans Elementary School chessboards and pieces, purchased some of the youngsters’ first year of federation memberships, and started chess lessons at no cost.
And it’s paying off.
“They’re a little rough around the edges,” DeLeon said about Evan’s new team, “but they got a 5th-place team trophy in their second tournament.”
Sarah Garza, 8, scrunched her cheeks while scouring the board for her next maneuver against Daniel Morales, 9. She slapped the timer and broke the silence with a simple utterance – “check.” Daniel protected his King in a series of moves, and in a few moments it was a stalemate.
“That’s good,” said Daniel, one of about a dozen Evan’s newcomers. “Sarah usually wins, but not this time.”
Sarah, also a student at Central Catholic School, starts her day solving chess puzzles left by her father.
“She solves them all,” said Michael Garza, 46, a hazardous materials supply technician at the Navy base in Kingsville. “Even the ones her mom doesn’t get.” Sarah also takes kung fu, is the highest ranking in kung fu in her class, and often competes with 12-year-old boys, he said, but she likes chess better. “Sarah can take ’em down physically if she can’t outsmart them staring eye-to-eye over the chessboard.”
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