Southwest High School goes for national chess 'three-peat'

There are no cheerleaders for the Southwest High chess team and the players will never see their names up in lights at the Target Center.

But they might get something even better.

"Checkmate! Checkmate! Checkmate!"

That, for those of you who might not follow competitive chess, is what a three-peat would sound like.

The Southwest High School team is in Atlanta to defend it's national chess title, for the second year in a row. The 13-member squad is the state's best and has twice won the championship for a class called U-1500, kind of the equivalent of Triple-A ball in scholastic chess.

Scholastic chess. That's the formal name for non-adult chess. At the high school tournament, the very best students play grueling matches, up to four hours long, on stage in front of an audience.

Nick Graves is among them. He's a junior at Southwest and last year took one of the tournament's national titles. It's a mixed blessing, he admits.

"A couple of my friends, they make fun of me. But...I just take it lightly. It's fun."

But it's serious, too. The chess world, like everything else, has been transformed by the internet.

"It's having a big impact, especially on the development of individual players," according to Jerry Nash, director of scholastic chess for the U.S. Chess Federation.

"You know, when I was growing up, I lived in a very rural area. About the only person I had to play was me. And I didn't even win all of those games. Now, they've got access to the Internet, so they can play hundreds -- in some cases, thousands, of games against players against opponents all over the world."

These days tournaments bring thousands of those players together to square off against each other in hotel ballrooms and in late-night sessions of "bughouse", a fast-paced and informal, caffeine-fueled game of team chess played on two boards at once.

Southwest junior Laura Howard has been to the nationals four times already.

"When you walk in, there's just thousands and thousands of chess boards. Or it seems that way, anyway, and everyone's playing and concentrating, and you know, there's people walking around, and looking all pensive, looking at the boards, pretending like, you know, they know what they're talking about."

"Yeah. It's really cool," she says.

It's rare for a young woman to play competitive chess. All but five of the 150 players at this year's state tournament were boys.

"It's actually kind of amazing, that of those five girls, two of them were on our team, so in terms of being a minority, for our team, we're doing pretty good."

And there's even more than that to be proud about in high school chess, supporters say.

"What chess does is everything that the education community is looking for in trying to develop self esteem, trying to develop these critical learning skills, math, critical thinking, character, all those areas," Jerry Nash says.

And, of course, there's the hardware, says Alex Adams, the coach of the Southwest squad.

"We do get huge trophies. Last year, we received a standing ovation in the Legislature, for having won it twice, and they put the pressure on for trying to three-peat, which is really a big deal."

Nick Graves, Laura Howard and their teammates will take their best shot at that starting this afternoon. The matches run through Sunday.

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