How To Start A Chess Club, Part 1

 

I'm Coach Lucker and I run a chess club at my school in Aldine ISD, Houston, Texas. My chess program is now in its sixth year. I have a program of about 50 chess players, and I help facilitate chess in other Aldine ISD schools.  

In the upcoming months I want to share my experiences in creating a chess club to guide you as you begin to build your chess program.

 

 

Why chess? How did I get involved? Do I need to be an expert chess player? How do I fund my club? How do I train my students? What brings success to a program? What shouldn't I do? What should I do? Should I take my players to rated tournaments? How often should I have my chess club meet? I hear these questions all the time from my schools that are just starting out.

My school is on the outskirts of Houston proper and many of my students carry "baggage" (for lack of a better term) from their home lives. Some live in apartments that are so dangerous that the courts have enacted felon-free zones around them. As I considered chess for my school, I came to the conclusion that a program like this might influence students in a positive way, and so our program was born.

I have to be completely honest about this: I didn't play chess and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing! I found a few students who expressed an interest, put them on computers with chess programs and bought some cheap chess sets from Walmart.

By the time we went to our first tournament, I had seven members in my club. We hopped on a bus, entered the tournament, and...we were annihilated. We came to the tournament totally unprepared and didn't even know we were supposed to bring chess sets!

I was embarrassed by the lack of preparation I had given my students. We were the bottom seven players in our division, with two students having two wins and the rest one or zero out of five games played.  

No student earned enough points for a trophy and we left feeling utterly defeated.

 

However, the first thing I was asked on Monday morning was..."when are we going to our next tournament!" In spite of a disappointing performance, my students had a blast and were hooked. Since that time I have grown as a coach and chess player.

In the upcoming months I want to share with you organizational tips, guiding principles, funding ideas, how I've incorporated ChessKid.com into my training, and stories from my last six years that I hope will inspire you to begin a successful chess program.

Don't be discouraged if your kids don't set the world on fire in their first couple of tournaments. Ask yourself what is the purpose of your club and what you want to achieve.  

As the year progressed, I learned to become a better chess coach, and my students started to experience success.  

The final tournament of our first year, we broke through in dramatic fashion with almost every student earning a trophy and taking team third place. If you are willing to put in the effort, your players will respond and success will follow.

Warm regards to all of you coaches starting a team from scratch! The rewards are great and it's a great way to reach kids.  

We have a motto on our chess team that is displayed on our logo:

(1) Make Friends -- Most important!
(2) Have Fun -- If chess isn't fun, why play?
(3) Play to Win -- Now you're talking! 
(4) Sportsmanship -- I always tell my kids that I would rather have them lose every game than win one game as a poor sport.  

Thank you for reading this article and good luck with your chess team!