Akron chess club students victorious at state tournament
Belal Tazamir has devised one simple move to assess what he’s up against.
When the 12-year-old Jennings student plays chess, he uses his second turn tomake his signaturemovewith the queen. Then, he uses the player’s reactionary move to determine whether he’s playing a beginner, intermediate, advanced or expert.
Evenwhen paired with an expert, though, Belal doesn’t worry.
“Now, if people say they’ve been playing 13, 14 years, I don’t get nervous,” Belal said. “In chess, it doesn’t matter. Everyone makes mistakes ... in one mistake, you can lose all the game.”
Just three months ago, the most experience Belal had withchesswasonacomputer screen. But after joining the chess club at Jennings middle school, Belal has stepped up his game — so much so that he took home fourth place out of 47 students in the Middle School Reserve division of the 2018 Ohio Scholastic Chess Tournament last month.
The entire Jennings team of 10 students played well in the tournament, coming in first place out of seven teams. Belal was one of the top four players on the team, along with Hamzah Abdelrahim, 14, Dominick Crosier, 13, and Ranjan Rai, 14.
Many of the students learned the basics of chess from Jennings math teacher Joanne Cook when they joined the team — but the advancedknowledgemanyof them nowhave for the game, they learned fromtheir dedication and practice.
“Every chance they get, they come tomy room after school,” Cook said. “My students will tell you most of them can beat me.”
The chess club at Jennings was started by Cook and retired teacher Bruce Hukill a fewyears ago. They both said Jennings principal Charles Jones had a big role, too — he played when he was a student, so he encouraged the team to start going to tournaments. He even stops in to play chess with the kids during their Thursday practices.
The Jennings team has beenable tocompete ina few other tournaments before, thanks to donations from teachers, advisers, Hukill, Cook and even Cook’s family members, but their most recent competitionwas their first overnight trip funded by the school board.
The teamrode a bus down to Pickering bright and early for the two-day competition, and each student played four matches. Thestudentsagreed they were exhausted from the trip — but when Cook went to wake them up at 7 the next morning, they had already been up for an hour practicing for the day ahead.
“It’s their passion,” Hukill said.
Their passion was palpable the Thursday after school ended for the summer, when about 15 of the kids in the chess club gathered inside the North Hill Branch of the Akron-Summit County Public Library, where they’re set to practice every week this summer.
Many students in the club will be advancing to high school next year, so Hukill andCookwant tostartgoing into elementary schools to expand and build their talent pool. But many of the kids going to high school want the club to expand in a different way — take it to the high schools, so they can continueplayingonthe team.
“It’s a good game,” Belal said. “If you play, then you always want to play.”
At their first gathering of thesummer, theprivateroom the students practiced in filled with chatter as some underdogs reveled in their first-time victories overmore experienced students.
And 10 minutes after practice was scheduled to end, most kids were still buried in their games, showing no intent to leave anytime soon.