The students sitting in Cross Country Elementary and Middle School’s media room are fidgeting, anxious to solve the chess puzzles that coach Daniel Katz has projected on the wall. They seem completely at ease, these thirty or so boys and girls, as peers rattle off cryptographic sequences of letters and numbers indicating a potential checkmate.

Katz smiles as one of his younger players offers a solution that he hadn’t thought of, only to have it corrected by one of his more veteran students.

“I had never really realized how much strategy there was to the game until I started teaching it,” said Katz , who, unlike his students, has had no formal chess training and began coaching with only a rudimentary grasp of the game.

But Katz, a special education teacher at Cross Country, and his team, public school students from west Baltimore, have made an amazing journey together since they began competing in the inaugural year of the Baltimore Kids Chess League six years ago.

They’re now the top elementary and middle school among the league’s 65 teams and a force to be reckoned with nationally. Their girls’ team, for example, won the Mid-Atlantic Girls Chess Championship in November. One of their students, Devon Campbell, has become the Cal Ripken of city chess. During their last jaunt to the National Chess Championship in Nashville, Campbell remained undefeated, winning five matches (and drawing two) and placing ninth in his grouping of nearly 400 students from around the country.

Katz has had to race to keep up with the blossoming talents on the team he has assembled.

“In the beginning, there was no problem; I taught them the basics,” he said. “After that, when I realized, wait a minute, I need to teach them more than how the pieces move and check and checkmate, I needed to study a lot on my own.”

“You should see the library I have at home and the amount of chess books I have picked up!”

Charm City’s path to chess success

The evolution of the Baltimore Kids Chess League is as remarkable a story as that of Katz and his students. A non-profit founded in 2004 (Cross Country being one of the 25 original schools to join), it has since expanded to 65 schools with 1,200 students who play on the teams. Funded through membership fees that are paid for by the schools and then matched by the Abell Foundation, BKCL helps to organize tournaments, provide equipment, and train and pay coaches.

Now the Baltimore league is one of the largest youth chess programs in the country, and the only one that incorporates grades K-12.

Steve Alpern, commissioner of BKCL and sole paid employee, explained that the program was originally started as a way to improve attendance, test scores, and behavior, a concept that several researchers have been able to validate.

In a 2009 Temple University study, for example, they tracked the performance of 151 students age 6-15 who played chess after school in Philadelphia. Researchers showed that those who played chess, when compared with their peers, had marked improvements in attendance, behavior, and math and reading skills.

Though the results were impressive, they don’t necessarily show a causal link between chess and academic achievement, Alpern and Katz note. Both pointed out that chess teams tend to attract academically gifted students to begin with. Still, the research still demonstrates a marked correlation between chess and student performance.

Though they do not have any formal research based in Baltimore to quantify their results, the league is currently partnering with chess non-profit Think Like A King on a grant from the DOE to study the impacts the program has had upon student achievement. While they are waiting for funding, Alpern explained that “we already sort of know that it’s working as schools like Cross Country show us that.”

“We have had reports of students with problems in schools straightening out after joining the program,” said Alpern.

Thinking two, three, four moves ahead

Devon Campbell stares intently at his younger sister Sydnee Campbell, as he waits for her to make a move during a scrimmage at practice. Devon, an eighth grader from Cross Country, is one of the shining stars of BKCL given his preponderance for winning tournaments. But his sister is giving him trouble, something, she explains, that “hardly ever happens.” (Possibly due to the presence of a reporter?)

“I can only beat him when he’s tired or distracted,” said his sister, after taking advantage of her older brother’s momentary distraction (and, to his dissatisfaction, his knight.)

Sydnee, like her brother, is no slouch at chess, and was an integral part of the girl’s team that won the Mid-Atlantic Girl’s Chess Championship in November. But, she explains, her brother is the one with all the expectations.

“I haven’t lost the City championship yet,” said Devon. “People keep telling me to be the best that I can be, and that’s what I try to do.”

Ever since his best friend Joseph taught him the basics of the game in third grade and convinced him to join the team, Devon has been steadily improving his skills. Devon said he thinks chess has improved his grades in math and science because it “helps his brain focus.” Alpern also believes that Devon’s success in chess has given him the self-confidence needed to pursue bigger and better goals.

One of the benefits of being a top chess player in Maryland, Alpern explained, is the chance at getting a full four-year scholarship to UMBC. But Devon, encouraged by his winning streak with chess, has set his sights higher and now wants to go to MIT, where he hopes to get a degree in electrical engineering.

“Chess teaches a lot of different things. It teaches patience. Dealing with consequences. Looking ahead, planning ahead,” said Coach Katz. “In the beginning I gave them puzzles where they had to think one move ahead. Now I give them ones that make them think two, three, four moves ahead. That translates to life. To think logically and with reason.”

But more than just helping them boost their grades in school, Katz said, he uses chess to help shape the kids’ behavior. “We teach them how to shake an opponent’s hand at the end of the game,” he said,”and how to win and lose gracefully.”

Catching on in the community

Like Devon, many of the students felt chess helped them in a variety of ways.

Eighth-grader Morgan Brown said chess taught her “how to be patient.” Her little brother Kenneth Brown, a fifth-grade student, said it taught him how to “strategize and think ahead.” The takeaway message for eighth grader Marcel Irving? “If you win or lose you say ‘I am going to do better the next game’ because at the end of the day, it’s a game and you can learn from your mistakes.”

Though Katz, an Orthodox Jew, cannot attend many of the tournaments that are held on Saturdays, he has been impressed by the level of commitment that he has seen from the community and most notably from the students’ parents. All of the tournaments are well chaperoned and one of the parents has now become a designated assistant coach. Steve Alpern explained that the success of the chess team at schools, and at Cross Country in particular, has become a source of significant pride for the community.

Even among children who aren’t on Cross Country’s team, chess has become something of a phenomenon. During lunch and recess, students ask Katz to borrow boards so that they can play in the cafeteria.
Joseph Grant, an eighth grader who wants to play chess at Poly, described how he started teaching a few people and how now it seems everybody is playing the game around school. But, he added with a glint of pride, he still manages to beat most of them.

“My biggest problem is that I don’t have room for any more kids,” said Katz. “That’s been my biggest challenge, trying to accommodate all the children that want to play.”

The next chess tournament for advanced players will be held on December 18th at Baltimore Polytechnic Insistute. For more information visit Baltimore Kids Chess League.