Community Chess Club Continues to Thrive
Open to all LISD students, club promotes strategic thinking and inclusiveness
March 22, 2019 — This time last year, Ellen Flores and her Creekside Elementary students were meeting each Tuesday afternoon in the Creekside library to practice chess. However, after the school year came to a close, Flores transitioned into a new role as a Language Acquisition Specialist for two Lewisville ISD campuses. While excited about the new opportunity, she was worried about leaving the 34 member chess club, dubbed the Dark Knights, behind. Luckily, leaving the Dark Knights turned out not to be the case.
“Our team mantra is ‘Never Give Up!’, and so with the help of some of the parents, we came up with a solution,” Flores said. “A community chess club!”
Fast-forward to today, the Dark Knights Chess Club has expanded beyond a single campus and is now a community chess club open to any Lewisville ISD student. The Dark Knights is comprised of more than 50 students in grades K-5 from schools like Creekside, College Street Elementary, and Ethridge Elementary. Not only does the club include students from LISD, but it has also welcomed students from five Coppell ISD elementaries.
“I don’t really have grade level restrictions,” Flores said, “but since I work at the elementary level, that’s usually where students more easily hear about it. My fifth-graders this year will be in middle school next year, and they will still be a part of the club. I won’t turn away anyone – there is no other place for kids who are interested in chess to convene and play for free.”
The Dark Knights meet every Tuesday at either the Lewisville Public Library or the Pizza Inn on Main Street in Lewisville. Chess practice attendance averages 26-30 students with the remaining members generally attending every other week.
“It’s been really amazing to have community support from the Lewisville Public Library as well our local Lewisville Pizza Inn – I think it’s made quite a unifying impact on the whole group of kids and parents,” Flores said. “We’re also very excited to be hosting an official USCF chess tournament at College Street Elementary on April 13th, and we anticipate that the new Mill Street Elementary will be on the official Region II Texas Chess scholastic tournament calendar!”
Creekside fourth-grader Ksenia Grigoryan enjoys the socialization part of chess club and said chess gives her a chance to put her math skills to work.
“I have fun, I get to spend time with friends and I get to learn more about chess,” she said. “My favorite part is that I get to spend time doing chess and math.”
Fellow Creekside student Iann Martinez finds chess to be a brain stimulator, and he likes coming to practices as it’s an opportunity to get better at the game.
“Chess is good for your brain,” the second-grader said. “You think and think and think, and you learn more how to make more moves. Before I didn’t know what the four-move checkmate was, but now I know.”
Added College Street fifth-grader Matthew Zuniga, “I love how quiet it is when we play chess because it helps us think.”
Pedro Ibarra, a CISD fourth-grade student, said he has been playing chess competitively for five years, having started as a kindergartener, and enjoys assisting his friends at the Tuesday practices.
“I think chess is a strategic game,” he said. “It’s pretty fun, and I like learning and being with my friends and helping them out.”
Because of how large regular practice attendance is, the club outgrew the Lewisville Public Library’s main conference room, and now meets primarily in the more spacious children’s section, where other young library patrons often join in impromptu games.
“That has been fantastic because the kids aren’t cramped, and it’s perfect for practice tournament rounds,” Flores said. “Generally, the first Tuesday of every month, the Dark Knights meet at the Pizza Inn, which has been a treat for the students.
“The owners of Pizza Inn were very kind, and reserve for us their large party room, which is also equipped with a large wall-mounted monitor to project tactics lessons and strategy puzzles; they also give everyone a free beverage if they have dinner, which is very generous,” Flores said. “The kids usually come and first have some pizza, a little socializing, and then as they’re finishing up they begin strategy practice. Then the waiters clean out all the plates and we start setting up chess boards on all the tables, and we have an hour or so for the kids to practice playing.”
According to Flores, the owner of this Pizza Inn and his family have been significant supporters of the chess club. Last year, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Wrestler II, donated personalized, monogrammed tournament bags to all members who participated in at least four tournaments, and this year, their son and owner of Pizza Inn, Robert Wrestler III, has continued to support the club in other ways, including fundraising opportunities and dedicating a wall in the restaurant to the team’s ever-growing trophy collection. To date, the trophy wall holds 15 trophies, as the Dark Knights have taken home multiple awards from various local tournaments, and even sent five representatives to the state tournament in Houston last fall. The group has also started working with National Chess Master Quaitemes Williams to keep the most advanced players growing in their skills.
The Dark Knights Chess Club has a history of its student membership being predominantly multilingual, currently with speakers of 11 different native languages other than English.
“While the benefits for these kids in developing their cognitive endurance and agility, self-discipline, appreciation for delayed gratification, and emotional coping skills are all undoubtedly of immense value,” Flores said, “one of the greatest qualities that chess has to offer is that it’s a universal, all-inclusive activity, fundamentally requiring only that one be able to recognize visual patterns, something we all do instinctively as humans from the moment we are born.”
She added, “This means that very young children who are barely learning to read, any student who is not a native speaker of English, or any age child who may feel marginalized in any way can all find themselves a place on our team. We’ve really fostered a great sense of support and encouragement that unifies the group.”
Being in a specialist position for the Bilingual and ESL department, Flores said she has been able to see on a larger scale how critical it is for students who are learning English to feel welcomed, and regarded as an asset to their community.
“It’s a primary goal of mine to continue to reach as many of those students and their families as I can, bring them into chess, and celebrate that they can be successful because they are a valuable part of us,” she said.
Flores’ vision for the chess club was best summed up when Ethridge Elementary student Milly Wang, a first-time chess player and a newcomer from China, used her electronic language translator during a recent tournament to show Flores a message. After an intense round for the novice player, Wang came to understand the ultimate goal.
The message read, “Friendship first, competition later.”