Organisers of the recently held Northland secondary school teams chess championships are planning to capitalise on the success of that event to strengthen the profile of the age-old strategic board game.
A strong resurgence of interest in competition chess at local secondary school has been led by Northland College principal Jim Luders and colleague Harko Brown. The latter, perhaps more well known for his kaupapa in promoting traditional Maori sports games, said chess had become really popular with students at the Kaikohe institution.
"Forty to 50 fight it out for a board every lunchtime. If they can't get a board, they play 3v3." Brown went on to complement his principal for his support before and during the aforementioned championships which were hosted at Northland College.
"It is unusual, but gratifying, to have a principal of a school attend a chess tourney as well as lead the hosts' mihi whakatau for their visitors," said Brown.
Challenges remain, however, in getting other schools on the bandwagon with interest yet to become widespread, Brown noted, adding there was a rather poor turnout for the aforementioned championships. Very disappointing in fact considering the lengths he and others had gone to to promote the tournament to every eligible school in the district by sending email notification and promoting the event through the Education Gazette. Eventually only five schools entered, while several others who had registered withdrew at the last minute. Brown was determined to keep up the good fight by noting solid strategies have been put in place to combat the lack of response.
Back home, the initiative had already been taken, with Northland College meeting the internal demand for chess by ordering another eight boards to allow the school chess club to stage a few challenges with staff and parents. As well, Brown recently approached the NZ Chess Federation to enquire about getting a New Zealand Grand Master to visit, possibly Murray Chandler, and play 20 boards at the same time in the school library.
"If one of our students could get a draw that would be sensational. I would invite the Kaitaia team down for that too."
Meanwhile, Kerikeri High School have accepted an invitation to play the first leg of a provincial inter-school challenge next month. Kudos too, went to Kaitaia College's Mike Bryan, for the work he has done over the years to keep the chess torch alight.
Bryan will be working with Brown to select some Far North rep teams to challenge the rest of Northland and even travel to Auckland for the odd challenge.
"We have the talent but our kids need strong competition to develop their game, expert tuition and chess passion."