How to explain it: 120 students from 27 schools, ages five through eleven, occupying one room for four hours and maintaining quietness to rival a library?

It could only mean one thing – a chess tournament.

Wednesday’s event was the Baltimore Kids Chess League’s final city-wide tournament of the 2014-2015 season, held at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth.

Intense as it was, the day of competition was a bit different from the match-ups that take place throughout the school year.

“This is a more relaxed tournament,” said Will Sinkler, coach of the team at Mt. Washington Elementary and Middle School. Aside from playing chess, he said, “the kids get out of school for half-a-day to have fun, meet students from other schools and eat pizza.”

Between rounds, as volunteers matched players based on their outcomes in the previous round, students laughed and joked in the refreshment room. A game of tag formed in the small courtyard of the building as more and more students from different schools jumped in.

The tournament, organized and refereed by volunteers, featured three rounds of chess matches, pairing students of similar age and skill level, leading to a final playoff round where students compete for trophies. There were plenty to go around.

“One kid at every table will get a trophy,” explained Caroline Williams, a volunteer and wife of Steve Alpern, the chess project’s commissioner who officiated the day.

“Steve thinks that the more trophies there are, the more impact it has on them.”

People Behind the Pieces

Sinkler’s team, the Checkmaters, had two players at the novice level and three in advanced. The team meets for an hour a week not only to play chess but to go over strategy. (It seemed to have payed off Wednesday as they took home a trophy in the individual category.)

Dave Dallas, coach for the Commodore John Rogers Elementary team, said it was the first year the school had a chess team in the past seven years. The team, which has about 25 participants, practices once a week for an hour and a half, Dallas said.

Since the tournament only allowed up to five players from each school, Dallas brought his top four. “Not just in skill, but also in attendance and interest,” he said.

Parent Patrice Carroll was pleased by her daughter Autumn Neil’s growing enthusiasm for chess. She said her daughter, a 3rd-grader at Alexander Hamilton Elementary School in West Baltimore, has been eager to compete.

“This is her third tournament,” Carroll said, noting that her daughter is clearly the chessmaster in their household: “She tries to teach me!”

Scholastic Checkmate

The Baltimore Kids Chess League has been helping to put chess programs into public schools since its founding in 2003. Along with providing materials for school programs and organizing tournaments, the league also awards scholarships to a week-long chess camp.

“Chess teaches kids how to problem solve while fostering good sportsmanship and school pride,” Linda Lee, the chess league’s president, explained. “Some studies have linked chess to higher reading scores.”

“The Baltimore Kids Chess League has continued to produce quality players,” said Steve Alpern, going on to call it the city’s “best scholastic program” in terms of the number of participants and number of students who go on to compete at the national level.

At the end of the tournament, 22 individuals and three teams took home trophies, with the Green School of Baltimore taking home first place at the team level.