Bobby Knight and bangin’ the boards. Those are words usually synonymous with March’s annual NCAA basketball tournament. During the week of March 24-28 at Darlington Middle School, it was rooks, knights and chessboards. The Middle School held its first chess tournament with 30 sixth, seventh and eighth graders participating during their lunch period in the Dodd Banquet Room. The tournament was organized by Jason Turner, Middle School history instructor, who organized a chess club for his sixth grade students. “We organized before the Christmas break and we’ve been playing as a group for about three months,” Turner said. “The students had been asking about putting together a big tournament for the School, so we did and the participation was much greater than I expected.”
Sixth graders made up most of the playing field in the tournament and the Final Four consisted exclusively of sixth graders: Fred Johnson, Jett Wayne Puckett, Ben Goldberg, and Thomas Kuckhoff. Johnson emerged as the victor and won a $10 gift certificate to Blockbuster, while Puckett’s runner-up finish earned him a $5 gift certificate. “We had a wide range of skill level in the tournament,” Turner said. “We had some beginners and we had some, like Ben Goldberg, who has been playing since he was five years old. I was really impressed with the level of play and with the improvement that some of our beginners made.”
Two matches that stood out were the first round and quarterfinal games of Will Orr-Abby Vincent and Rea Law-Puckett, respectively. Vincent just recently began playing and gave Orr a strong match. But the game of the tournament occurred between Law and Puckett. That battle took up almost two lunch periods over two periods before Puckett advanced to the semifinals. “That was a great match,” Turner said. “Rea and Jett played for an hour before a single piece was captured. That’s incredible to me. It’s nice to know that kids can use their minds to formulate strategy in a game like chess. And it’s encouraging to know that kids can do something with their spare time besides staring at Playstations and GameCubes.”
Turner’s classroom before school and during breaks and study halls can often be filled with as many as 25 students playing or watching chess games. The play can be competitive and fierce. “We have some kids who take these games very seriously and who hate to lose almost as much as they love to win,” Turner said. “But they almost always exhibit great sportsmanship. They know if they don’t that their privileges can be taken away.”
Much of the credit for the success of the sixth grade club goes to Pat Waddell, Upper School math instructor, Turner said. Waddell coordinates the Upper School’s club and tournaments and assisted with the Middle School tournament. Waddell said there is talk that chess could become a sport sanctioned by the Georgia High School Association.
Turner plans on hosting one more tournament before the end of the school year. “I’d like to get more seventh and eighth graders involved,” Turner said. “I limit play in my room to sixth graders exclusively, otherwise I’d have 40 or 50 kids in my classroom during breaks and before school. Consequently, the sixth graders’ level of play is pretty high comparatively, but I know there are some seventh and eighth graders out there who can play well.” One option for all chess lovers is to play online at www.GameKnot.com. It is a free service that allows players of all ages and experience to play each other from all over the world. Many of the sixth graders who play in Turner’s classroom also play online – another reason why their level of play has increased.
Those who participated in the Middle School tournament include: eight graders Joseph Wiggins and Matt Doerner; seventh graders Trey Payne and Steven Seckman; sixth graders Johnson, Puckett, Goldberg, Kuckhoff, Law, Orr, Vincent, Dylan Nichols, Josh Webb, Josh Land, Coltan Palmer, Isabel Bonnyman, Sharpe Sablon, Eric Wetherington, Gavin Tumblin, Jessica Moore, Maggie Davis, Taylor Richardson, John Tullos, Patrick Pierson, Thomas Craton, and Hannah Kadum.
