The Friday bell rang and students made their way to teacher Ms. Sara Kamphuas’s class for the weekly Chess Club meeting. Juniors Francisco Rodriguez and Joey Leavell set up their chess board to begin their blitz chess match. Rapid pressing of the timer faded into the background as the boys focused on their moves.
“Do it, I dare you,” Rodriguez said. “Joey, you know my work with my queen. It’s too good. She my girl. You’re gonna lose something.”
“I just don’t know what, dude.” Leavell said.
“The mind games, Joey. The mind games,” Rodriguez said. “There’s only one place to go, Joey.”
The timer went off and signaled a win to Rodriguez. Leavell applauded him on the win and asked to play another game, but Rodriguez declined.
“I gotta cool down a bit,” Rodriguez said. “I gotta cool down, my heart is racing.”
On the other side of the room, Ms. Kamphaus helps former students Cora Hernandez and Luca Chudoba with college Calculus for their final. Initially, Ms. Kamphuas agreed to sponsor the club because of her son’s love of the game. For the future, she hopes he can come and play with the students on afternoon.
“The reason I do it is because I love the kids,” Ms. Kamphuas said. “Why would I stay after school on Friday if I didn’t love them?”
Students have the opportunity to test their chess skills against fellow chess members, and the skill level of the players range from beginner to experienced. With the club slowly expanding, some of the regular chess members have future plans to have teaching sessions on how to play the game.
“Mainly, [chess club] encouraged me,” Leavell said. “When I started chess club, I knew nothing about it, but I saw some other really great players. I was like ‘Well, I wanna be like them so I can be competitive with them, so I started studying and learning from them.”
