Cayo Knights, Bishops & Supreme Pawns top chess tournament

It is not a big sport in Belize as basketball, cycling or football, but the population of chess players and fans are growing steadily. And Saturday’s second annual Belize Chess Olympiad at the U.B. Gym proved that players drawn to the game are as young as lower primary school students. They filed in district by district bearing placards – some defending champs, others first-time entrants, one hundred and twenty altogether. When the game began, all minds were in deep concentration, and by the time it was over, Cayo Knights placed first and Bishops also of Cayo came in second while the Supreme Pawns of Stann Creek Ecumenical settled for third. For both coach and player, the game goes way beyond sitting down to challenge an opponent’s mind.

Amani Coombs, thirteen year old participant, Bze Christian Academy, Cayo
“I can express how I want to play, I have don’t have to pay any other way but how I would. It’s like a complete freedom on sixty-four squares and I really like that.”

Micah Williams, Nat’l Coord., Bze Nat’l Youth Chess Fed.
“Chess is a tool that can help our young children to concentrate, to calm down, to think, to make decisions and certainly if we can implement that sort of attitude in them. It will help them in their longer life, you know. When they grow up they would need to make decisions, those decisions can not be made in haste, so they would have to sit down and think about it. And Chess does just that, it teaches them that discipline.”

Individual winners included eight year old Jeremy Chang of Cayo, nine year old Joshua Chiang of Cayo, eleven year old Navir Martin of Corozal, thirteen year old Alfred Awe of Stann Creek, and fifteen year old Wayne Huang of the Cayo District. This year players were required to use chess clocks and players eleven years and older were required to record each move for the final two rounds of play. A rating system was also introduced, which is recognized internationally for estimating each player’s strength. Currently there are over seven hundred youths playing chess in Belize, a figure which has almost doubled in just one year.