Meet the ICA Board
Click here for contact information for ICA Board members.
Bill Brock (Treasurer) is a partner in a Chicago Loop CPA firm. He is a former college instructor with a Ph.D. in English from Loyola. Bill has been playing tournament chess since 1967 and has been rated over 2000 for most of the past 30 years. He has been active in the Illinois Chess Association since 1989, having served as president, treasurer, and editor of the Illinois Chess Bulletin. Bill is also chief editor of chicagochess.blogspot.com. Bill occasionally teaches students.
Mike Cardinale (Upstate Vice President) has been active in scholastic chess in Chicago since 1997, first as coach of the Gale School team on Chicago’s north side, and since 2002 as chief tournament director of the Youth Chess Foundation of Chicago. YCFC stages six free tournaments each year for kids in grades K-8, drawing primarily CPS students. YCFC’s mandate is to reduce or eliminate socioeconomic barriers to chess participation in Chicago. Mike has modeled the YCFC program on the legendary Bad Bishops of Vaux High School in Philadelphia, who were active during Mike's high school playing days in New York in the early '80s. For his day job, Mike serves as Financial Manager of The Apartment People, a north side apartment rental agency that has generously supported the efforts of YCFC.
Carl Dolson (President) is a retired partner in a national CPA firm, specializing in corporate taxation. He studied chess during his high school and college years, and first played tournament chess while in college. He took a hiatus from chess in 1977, having graduated from college, entered the workforce, and gotten married. While recuperating from heart bypass surgery in 2005, he started looking at his old chess books and decided to start playing again. He has been an active tournament player since then. He volunteered to take the open ICA Treasurer’s position in 2006 and was elected ICA President in 2012.
Chris Merli has been playing chess since 1970. He earned a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Illinois in1997and teaches Biology and Chemistry at Richland College in Decatur. Chris is a National Tournament Director. He has directed a number of national tournaments and is heavily involved in high school chess, coaching the excellent University High School team in Urbana and serving as chief at the IHSA State Championship. He is on the IHSA and IESA Advisory Boards. He also coaches elementary school players and promotes elementary school chess in central Illinois. He has served as the Missouri Chess Association Executive Director and as both the Vice President and President of the ICA. He is currently on the board of the Illinois Chess Coaches Association.
Jerry Neugarten (Chair of Youth Committee) has run scholastic chess clubs and coached since 1995, initially in New York’s Hudson Valley. His former club produced a national champion. A retired lawyer, Jerry was a prosecutor in Manhattan, served as Special Assistant to District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, and founded the New York State Law Enforcement Council. Raised in Hyde Park, Jerry returned to the area in 2006 and started a large K-8 club in Highland Park. The following year he spearheaded a district-wide program now serving 350 kids in 11 schools (www.hpchess.org). He has won community service awards for his volunteer work organizing chess programs in both New York and Illinois. Jerry is also a mediator and mock trial coach. He became active in ICA during 2009.
Mark Nibbelin is employed in IT after teaching Chemistry and Physics for 10 years. He became involved in chess as a volunteer computer operator doing tournament pairings - while his son played in the tournaments. Mark later served as a volunteer assistant coach of the Normal University High School Chess Team, on which his son played. The last several years Mark has volunteered as a chess teacher at the kindergarten level for the chess team at Illinois State University Thomas Metcalf School. He has served several times as a delegate from Illinois to the USCF and is a member of the USCF Scholastic Committee. In addition to serving on the ICA Board, Mark is a member of ICA’s Youth Committee. Local to Normal, Illinois, Mark is a Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bloomington - Normal Area Scholastic Chess Association, is a not-for-profit organization serving 25 elementary schools in Mclean County. Each season the BNASC offers a schedule of weekly chess tournaments to 200 + players along with many recent Illinois state championship events.
Murrel Rhodes (Chair of Bid Committee) has been active in the Peoria chess community for over 40 years. He has also been active in ICA, having served as editor of the Illinois Chess Bulletin, and in the USCF, where he has been a voting delegate from Illinois. Murrel is a chess Expert and currently helps run Peoria’s Hult Chess Club for kids in grades K-9 (www.hultcc.org). A retired businessman, he is also an active private coach.
Josh Rohrscheib (Downstate Vice President)is an attorney and community organizer in Decatur. He has also taught political science and communications courses at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Millikin University, and Richland Community College. Josh is co-president of the Decatur Chess Club (www.decaturchessclub.com) and working to establish chess programs in Decatur-area schools and after-school programs. He is very much in awe of the dedication to chess and service to communities throughout the state provided by the other members of the ICA board. Josh has been playing chess since early childhood, and is grateful for the many friendships formed over the board.
Tom Sprandel (Secretary) is a retired engineer. He spent his working career in design engineering, project engineering and manufacturing management, working for such companies as McDonnell Douglas, Stewart Warner and Borg-Warner. In addition to being one of the web developers for the ICA, he also programs web database applications for English Springer Rescue America, Inc. ESRA places over 1,700 dogs per year into new homes.
Tom enjoys games of all sorts, but has a particular love of chess. A mid-level club player, he has taught the basics of the game to many children and adults. He is a retired tournament director and one of the founders of Evanston Chess Club. His emphasis there has been on low-cost, community-based chess, played for the love of the game. As President of the ICA he worked to create a stable organization that focuses on expanding the number of people involved and on developing a sound operational infrastructure.
Will Tseng