The Rock River Valley has a proud chess history including at least three national champions and six high school team championships. Three USCF national tournaments have been hosted in Rockford.

The Rockford area has at least two dozen scholastic chess clubs that compete regularly in the Rockford Chess Challenge, as well as many regional, state, and national events.

Monday nights is 'chess night' at the Barnes and Noble at Perryville and State.

The website of the Rockford Chess Association (www.rockfordchess.org) includes news, tournament listings, tutors, a guide on how to start a club, and other useful links. It has a particularly good set of instructional material, including both lessons and handouts, many of which are included as links in this website’s section called “Starting a Chess Program.”

The Route 20 Chess Club, based in Freeport, serves northwest Illinois and southwest Wisconsin.  The club  maintains an active website (http://route20chess.blogspot.com/) with a calendar of events, annotated games, tournament results, standings on the club ladder, ratings of local players, and photos.

The principal scholastic organizer in Rockford is Chuck Beach. For more information: rockfordchess@comcast.net.

The Knight Moves Chess Club (KMCC) is located at the Rudy Lozano branch of the Chicago Public Library, the largest Spanish-language library in the city located in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. The club was formed in September, 1989 with a $100 contribution from a local businessman which was used to purchase 12 chess sets. The club has been run ever since by Hector Hernandez, the library’s branch manager, a former president of ICA, and an award-winning leader in Chicago’s adult and youth chess scene for more than 30 years. (See Hector’s profile in the “ICA Youth Committee” section of this website.)

The club began running tournaments in 1991, and now hosts four Saturday tournaments a year including the Chicago Latino Chess Championship and the Dia de la Raza/ Columbus Day Open. Club members have earned top honors in city, state, regional and national events, including winning 14 state and national titles. Two members played in Mexico’s Junior Olympics a few years ago, and others have won college scholarships through the Chicago Public Schools’ “MVP” tournament held every spring. In 1997 KMCC was named one of the nation’s top 50 library programs for young adults by the American Library Association.

In 1995, the Lozano library received a grant from the Chicago Community Trust through the Chicago Public Library Foundation. Some of the funds were used to build the chess club. A local artist, Guillermo Delgado, was commissioned to create artwork for the club, and his designs have been used ever since on the club’s tables and T-shirts. Another club highlight took place on March 5, 2000, when the Chicago Tribune ran a nine-page article on the club in its Sunday Magazine.

The club has hosted activities with Mexican champions IM Roberto Martín del Campo and WIM Yadira Hernández.  It’s also hosted simultaneous exhibitions with GM’s Dmitry Gurevich, Gilberto Hernandez, Andrés Rodríguez, Gildardo García, IM Alfonso Almeida, and FM Ricardo Szmetan.

The club meets every Thursday from 6-8 p.m., with average attendance of approximately 20 players. Tournaments and simultaneous exhibitions attract much larger groups. It offers lessons running 30-45 minutes which typically cover game reviews, middle game combinations, and classic endgames. The remainder of club sessions is devoted to play, but the instructor spends additional time with those wanting or needing extra help. The club is open to adults as well as kids, and it’s not unusual to see very young children playing against octogenarians.

For more information on KMCC, contact Hector R. Hernandez at hernande@chipublib.org or (312) 746-4329. 

Chess in Peoria has a long history, and is overseen today by the Greater Peoria Chess Federation (www.gpcf.net). The Federation grew out of a merger in 1965 of the Peoria Chess Association, one of the first USCF affiliates in the nation, and Peoria’s famous Kingsmen Chess Club. Among the tournaments sponsored by the Federation are two annual USCF Heritage events: the Bradley Summer Open at Peoria’s Bradley University, and the Greater Peoria Open.

The Federation also oversees Peoria’s two city-wide clubs. The Lakeview Museum Club is open on Monday nights to adults and strong youth players. It offers introductory and advanced classes and lists its special events on the Federation website. The Hult Health Education Center (www.hultcc.org) is for youth in grades K-12. It meets on Friday nights, and offers individual and group lessons.

In 1996, the Federation set up the Greater Peoria Chess Foundation, whose primary mission is to sponsor and support youth chess. The Foundation supplies teaching materials and maintains an extensive library of books, chess sets and boards for support of local chess activities, including beginning clubs.

Approximately 16 elementary and high schools in Peoria, both public and private, have chess clubs. Most are run by a faculty sponsor with help from one or more parents of club members.

Approximately 12 youth tournaments are held in Peoria during the school year. Highlights include the tournament hosted by Washington School District 52 in the late fall, which draws 100-150 players. Two other major Peoria events, held toward the end of the school year, are the District 150 tournament (100-125 players) and the Tazewell County tournament (150 plus). Peoria also hosts workshops and a summer chess camp. Princeville, about 25 miles from Peoria, also has an active and vibrant chess program.

Peoria has also hosted several major national and state events including the 1989 National Jr. High School Championships, the 1996 and 2006 Illinois State Elementary Championships, and the 1998 National Elementary Championships.

Peoria was host to another major event in chess history. In 1945, before the end of World War II, it hosted the U.S. Open and the annual meeting of the USCF at the Hotel Pere Marquette. During that meeting, F.I.D.E., which had been dormant for many years, was re-organized.

Peoria is also home to John Lutes, the author of many chess books who had the distinction of drawing Bobby Fischer in tournament play. The www.gpcf.net website has information on local events, players, city championship games and the Federation’s lending library.

History. The Highland Park program started in 2008 after several months of planning by a committee representing each of the 11 schools in District 112, which serves students in grades K-8 in Highland Park and Highwood. Committee members include parents, coaches, PTO/PTA representatives (including after-school program coordinators) and directors of a few pre-existing small clubs.

The genesis of the program is described in a report issued by the committee in May 2008 entitled “Open Doors: A Proposal to Increase Access and Create a Program of Excellence in District 112 Chess.” The report, which appears on the Highland Park website (http://hpchess.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=25&Itemid=64), described the problems with then-existing programs in the district: inadequate instruction, high cost, low attendance, lack of permanence, and scarce opportunities to compete. It made a series of recommendations, including setting up large parent-run clubs feeding from multiple schools, tiered instruction to serve students at different levels of ability, standardization of curricula, open enrollment regardless of students’ ability to pay, increased funding (much of which would later come from the district’s PTO’s and PTA’s), increased networking, the establishment of a district-wide website, more opportunities to compete, and the encouragement of a non-competitive track at all clubs in the district.

These goals were largely achieved during the summer of 2008, and the District 112 school administration joined in announcing the program that fall. The District provided key logistical support, including space for after-school programs and weekend tournaments, security screening for coaches and volunteers, payroll services, and help on publicity. Advice and support was provided by the director of the Evanston program, who helped Highland Park recruit coaches and gave permission for sections of the Evanston scholastic website to be included on Highland Park’s site. The program received coverage in local newspapers and formed an alliance with the Highland Park Public Library, which continues to sponsor some of its programs. The program now serves more than 400 students and is the most popular extra-curricular activity in the district.

Major features of the program. The program provides central support, but individual clubs have developed differently.  The clubs share a common curriculum for beginners and intermediates (available on the program’s website) and clubs all use the same club management software, Think Like a King’s Chess Club Manager, to keep track of wins and losses and generate club ratings and rankings. (The software is described in our section called “Starting a Chess Program” above.) All clubs also feed their roster information, including parent names, phone numbers and email addresses, into a shared Google online spreadsheet. The common spreadsheet facilitates district-wide emails about tournaments, workshops, articles, and other items of general interest.

Three of the district’s five clubs meet twice a week for two hours; the other two meet once a week. Club members receive one or two 45-minute lessons a week. The program also runs occasional training sessions for the district’s top players.

Website. The program’s website contains current news, profiles of its coaches and club directors, articles about the program, a list of nearby tournaments, a section describing how tournaments work and listing tournament results, particulars and contact information for the program’s clubs, a list of available tutors, the program’s basic curriculum, photos, and special features. It is visited by hundreds of visitors a month.

Coaches. The program employs a mix of adult and student coaches. Some of the adult coaches are parents or others who are retired or have flexible work schedules. Many serve as volunteers. Coaches meet from time to time to share tips and best practices. Some teach at more than one club. Two committee members do most of the recruitment of new coaches, often networking outside the district.

All the clubs use student coaches as well. High schoolers are generally paid $20 per session and usually teach intermediate-strength players. Some clubs use middle schoolers to help teach and mentor K-1’s. Student coaches age 14 or older are eligible for work permits, allowing them to be paid, but most of the program’s middle-school coaches work as volunteers. A few have been honored at city-wide award ceremonies.

Parent volunteers, most of whom are not chess players, help oversee club sessions.

Tutoring. In the 2009-2010 academic year, approximately 30 kids in the program received private tutoring from adult and high school coaches, a number which is steadily rising.

Tournaments and matches. The program runs inexpensive unrated Saturday tournaments structured to foster team solidarity: team awards are based on the scores of a club’s top players across all age groups. These tournaments are open to players from outside Highland Park. One Highland Park club director also sponsors small inexpensive open rated tournaments attended by adults and some of the stronger Highland Park youth players.

District clubs play against each other in after-school matches, which have thus far been organized on an ad hoc basis. The format is less formal than tournaments, with continuous re-pairing of players after their games end and pizza served toward the end of the match. The district-wide committee is planning to set up a more formal league to promote intra-district matches. The committee has also organized a “District Team” comprised of the strongest players from all the clubs, which has played several matches against teams from other areas.

Budgets. Club budgets range from $1500-$3000, most of which is used to pay coaches.  Funds come from two sources. PTO’s and PTA’s in the five host schools support students from those schools in varying amounts. District-wide, most students attend clubs for free. The remainder are asked to pay annual membership fees of from $75 to $100. The program has a liberal program of scholarships for those who cannot afford the fees.

Attendance from feeder schools is lower than at host schools, partly because after-school busing between schools is not available. Participation from the district’s middle schools is also relatively low, but is expected to increase as kids who attend clubs in elementary school move up.

In retrospect: The Highland Park program was built “bottom up,” and it took months to recruit representatives from each of the district’s 11 schools to serve on the planning committee. Program directors now believe that a “top down” approach beginning with the superintendent or the district’s principals might have saved considerable time.

Scholastic chess in the Bloomington-Normal area dates back at least to the early 1960s. Bloomington High School had a strong team and competed against Illinois State University, but we know of no other inter-school competition from that period. This changed in the late 1960s, when several elementary school clubs were formed in Bloomington and played against each other. By then, the Bloomington High School team was also competing in the state high school championship.

Several county-wide tournaments for elementary and high school kids were organized in the early 1970s. Attendance was approximately a hundred. The success of those tournaments led to a series of smaller USCF-rated youth tournaments. Then came a dormant period from 1975 to 1986, when only University High in Normal was competing in the high school championship, which by then had been taken over by the Illinois High School Association (IHSA).

In the fall of 1986, a club was formed at the Oakland School in Bloomington by Garrett Scott, a legend in Illinois scholastic chess who remains active. Garrett took his team to the state elementary championship the following year in East Peoria. The team enjoyed some success there and decided to try the Elementary Nationals in Terre Haute, Indiana. There was local publicity, and other schools took note. There followed, in the next couple of years, school clubs in Stevenson, Bent, Centennial and Bloomington Jr. High in Bloomington and Metcalf, Colene Hoose and Glenn in Normal. Five of those seven clubs were headed by teachers, and the others by parents. The Martin Luther King Tournament was founded in 1988 and has grown from approximately 150 players to more than 300 today. The number of clubs varies somewhat from year to year, but there have been as many as 20 clubs in a given season who enter players in outside tournaments.

In August of 2001, several local chess leaders formed the Bloomington-Normal Area Scholastic Chess (BNASC) organization (www.bnasc.org). BNASC is dedicated to promoting the game through the sponsorship of tournaments, educational events, and other related chess activities for kids in grades K-12. In August of 2004, BNASC was granted 501(c)(3) status. The BNASC Board has grown to 20 members, most of whom are coaches and school chess club facilitators. It meets monthly to prepare for local and state tournaments, assist local school clubs, and plan new programs. It runs approximately seven regional K-8 tournaments from December through March, most of them during January and February. Many local players also participate in the two major statewide tournaments (the K-8 championship and the “All-Grade”) and some attend national tournaments. After a period of rapid growth, BNASC has a stable and flourishing program.

BNASC hopes to have a chess club in every school in the Bloomington/Normal Area, up to fifteen miles from our city borders. We presently have about 20 K-8 clubs. The model varies from school to school. Clubs tend to be as strong, as gauged by their competitive success, as their leaders make them. Almost all the clubs have some sort of instruction. There is no uniform format for club organization or instructional model that covers all the clubs. High school teams, including Bloomington, Heyworth, Normal Community, Olympia (Stanford) and University HS (Normal) compete in the IHSA state championship tournament.

BNASC operates on three core principles: 1. Kids Come First! 2. Teamwork! 3. We are all here to have fun!

Kids Come First! BNASC is committed to ensuring that kids have an enjoyable and safe learning experience. Our goals are to help kids develop their chess skill and learn good sportsmanship. We share with them the thrill of victory, and encourage them if they experience the agony of defeat.

Teamwork! Local chess leaders, parents, coaches, facilitators, teachers, and other organizations are committed to working together. We have friendly competition, but we work as a team to serve the kids. An overall environment of cooperation among the adults who run the programs has been a key to our success. An example of community teamwork is the financial support of State Farm Insurance, through its Good Neighbors Grant Program. This program helps chess programs and other not-for-profit organizations by encouraging State Farm employees to volunteer in their communities. When an employee volunteers 40 hours or more during a given year to a particular organization, State Farm then helps the organization additionally with a $500 contribution. Because State Farm is based in Bloomington and is the area’s largest employer, almost every school team in the area, as well as BNASC itself, benefit from this outstanding program.

We are all here to have fun! Working on a project or serving others can be stressful and time consuming. We work hard, but as a predominately volunteer organization, we also laugh! There is a joy in serving and conversing with one another. Our goal is to have both kids and our program leaders have a memorable, enjoyable experience.