Youth chess competition draws a crowd

It’s a game that’s been around over a thousand years, and in Belize its roots likely go back as far as the Baymen. But in more recent times chess has toiled in relative obscurity in our country, with no formal organisation and no figures to indicate just how many people were playing the game. But in less than a year, one organisation has taken chess, at least at the youth level, from inconspicuous hobby to what may just be the fastest growing sport in Belize. Brent Toombs reports from Belmopan.

Brent Toombs, Reporting
Representing all corners of the country, young chess enthusiasts from throughout Belize congregated in the capital city this weekend for the Belize National Youth Chess Foundation’s first ever national tournament. The championship showdown is just the latest effort by the organisation to promote the sport among Belize’s youth.

Ella Anderson, Program Director, B.N.Y.C.F.
“This is the event where we have all the new chess players who started last summer during the summer camp or started in the fall, and they’ve progressed to the level that they are playing in the national tournament now.”

The game of chess dates back to medieval times, and the costuming, decorations, and pageantry on display at the University of Belize gymnasium certainly reflect that spirit. But the actual running of the tournament is nothing less than high tech. Using the internationally standardised Swiss system, each player will face five opponents. From there it’s up to the computer.

Ella Anderson
“After the fifth round the computer system determines which kids are first, second, third place. If there are any tie breaks the computer determines which person played the stronger players and they go to the top of our winning list.”

Ella Anderson, who along with her husband Ian, is the driving force behind the National Youth Chess Foundation. Together with a small army of volunteers, they’ve assembled chess clubs throughout the country, and this tournament is the culmination of almost a year’s effort. However, even the Andersons were overwhelmed by the response.

Ian Anderson, Cave’s Branch Adventure Co.
“We were hoping to have maybe seventy-five or eighty kids but we have had a hundred and forty here today from thirty-eight different teams. And these teams are ranging all the way from the farthest village in Toledo to the most northern villages along the Mexican border in Corozal.”

Ella Anderson
“We had amazing response from all the districts, and we had to limit each school to send only four kids because some of them wanted to send fifteen, twenty, thirty. And the amazing thing is that just only a year ago we couldn’t collect even thirty kids from all over the country.”

Finding kids who want to play chess no longer seems be a problem. In fact the challenge facing the foundation now is how to keep up with the sport’s unprecedented growth. And nowhere, it seems, is chess more popular than in Toledo.

Jose Teul, Coach, San Pedro Columbia R.C.
“On every move you make, remember this is critical thinking. If you’ve got to, watch his move. If you think it’s not a good move, look for the better move.”

Over one quarter of the players in this weekend’s tournament are from Toledo. The enthusiasm with which youths from virtually every village in that district have embraced chess is attributable to grass roots volunteers like’s San Pedro Columbia’s Jose Teul.

Jose Teul
“When Miss Ella from the youth foundation had asked me to coordinate a workshop for teachers I had sent a memo to all the schools and the participation was very high, and I had over twenty-five teachers participating in the workshop.”

“Why I see chess as a program that has come a long way in Toledo is because of the involvement of businesses at large, the participation of the education manager, the different government and grant agents school management. Without them it wouldn’t have been possible.”

Teul spent nine years with the national sports council, so he obviously believes in the benefit of healthy competition. But he is convinced that there is something special about chess.

Jose Teul
“We are taught that if you don’t win a game you are not a loser, but you learn and would hope that in all aspects and all walks of life we would be taught that way.”

And if the National Youth Chess Foundation has learned anything over the past year, it’s that it takes people—a lot of people—to bring an event like this to fruition.

Ella Anderson
“I didn’t expect that there would be so many volunteers, in all the districts and I just feel so proud because all of them are putting in their time and effort and staying after school to coach their kids. Every single person who volunteers feels very passionate about their kids, and I feel almost to the point of almost tears when I look at some of the coaches who put in so much energy in with their kids.”

Ian Anderson
“And it makes everything we’ve done worthwhile, everything we done to put this together over the last couple of months. And hundreds of volunteers of one type or another have all contributed to putting this together.”

Ella Anderson
“It takes all the Cave’s Branch guides, who instead of doing their regular job of working with the guests, they were here. All the reservation people, the accounting, everybody at Cave’s Branch were involved. In addition, we had some painters from Belize City who did majority of those flags. So we had a lot of volunteers and all of them spent sometimes two, three weekends painting, drawing, helping. U.B. students, again, some of them came to help as coaches and some of them did some of the banners, some of the set up.”

“And a few days ago when Ian explained to our guests at Cave’s Branch that we had this exciting event, the guests volunteered to draw the banners for all the schools. So today in the morning when you the kids were coming in with their banners, some of those banners were made by people from the U.S.A., from Canada, who just came for a few days and they went back absolutely shocked that they got the chance to participate, to help out in an event like this.”

With the first annual youth tournament now behind them, the challenge for the foundation becomes how to maintain the enthusiasm.

Ian Anderson
“I think that we’ve already, in the last nine months, started a momentum. We started off with no national chess foundation teams throughout the country. We started out by putting an ad in the newspaper asking for volunteers to having over forty teams throughout the country, almost four hundred kids playing chess right now and it’s got that national momentum going. What we need to do a foundation is just to keep it more exciting all the time. I don’t know what we are going to do to beat this, but the kids deserve to have something bigger and better and more challenging.”

Reporting from Belmopan, I’m Brent Toombs for News Five.

First place in the team category went to Indian Creek Toledo, coached by Benjamin Tuario while Holy Angels of Stann Creek coached by Cornelius Cayetano and Brian Chun came in second. Salvation Army from Belize City, coached by David Martinez came in third.

All winners received trophies and an invitation to an advanced chess camp scheduled for August.