Mind games: school chess clubs foster friendships, critical thinking

“I usually try to get all my work done before I play chess," he said. "Sometimes the urge to play just comes over to me, so I do my work at home or later on during the day.”

One day, Rawls told his science teacher Brad Kentosh he struggled to stay engaged in class because he didn’t feel challenged. A few weeks later, Kentosh walked into his room to find Rawls and another student playing chess, right before the start of sixth period biology. Other students had gathered around to watch.

So Kentosh offered to help Rawls start a chess club. The club meets Wednesdays after school and is open to middle and high school students.

Students sat in pairs at Kentosh's lab tables, hunched over laminated chess boards. Kentosh let the students pull up an instrumental jazz playlist on YouTube. He set two cardboard boxes on a vacant tabletop — one full of single-serve packaged snacks and the other brimming with Dum Dum suckers.

“Chess is a good way to learn about other people," Rawls said. "I enjoy doing that. I made a lot of friends by playing chess.”

“I enjoy knowing the person who I'm playing against and not knowing what they're going to do next, or trying to analyze what they're going to do," he added. "It's a good adrenaline rush.”

Much of the Mansfield club's equipment, including handmade chess sets and photocopies of training manuals and scoreboards, was donated by Bill Asher.

Asher, a retired Mansfield City Schools teacher, used to spar with students during lunch.

"I would wind up playing four or five or six kids at the lunch hour and the others would sit around and play or watch," Asher said, recalling his time at John Simpson Junior High School. “I did that for three years.

"They had a teacher at Appleseed, but the kids got so they could beat him pretty quick," he said. "I made sure they had to work hard to beat me."

Some of those students continued playing each other after they went on to high school. In 1976, a group of students from Mansfield won the novice team title at the National High School Chess Championship in Cleveland. Charles Miller of Mansfield won the individual novice title. 

After he retired, Asher started making primitive wood sets to donate to local schools, hoping to revive the area’s chess legacy.

“I would like to see some sort of a chess league — all of our schools getting a team together and playing with each other,” he said.

Kentosh said he'd like to see a local schools chess tournament someday, once his fledgling club has some more experience.

The chess club at Mansfield Senior High School is the newest in Richland County, but it's not the first. Both Mansfield Spanish Immersion and Lexington High School have well-established organizations.

Students at Spanish Immersion also meet after school. Many of them play online.

At Lexington, chess club takes place on Wednesdays during the high school's new advisory period. Attendance ranges from 15 to 20 students.

"It's just exploded this year," said club advisor Tad Davis. "Meeting during the school day, there's so many more kids who have the ability to come to chess club and participate."

Davis spent the first few weeks of the school year explaining the fundamentals, but most of the time chess club members simply show up and play. He encourages students to check out websites like chess.com, which have free tutorials.

“I’ve had kids come in and ask for chess sets on other days where they have a study hall or they got ahead of their schoolwork and want to play a game," he said.

Senior Adison Delp said he enjoys getting lost in the game.

“It's a way to get your mind off other things," he said. "Take a break and just focus on chess.

Delp said he tends to play more defensively, reacting to the other player and letting his gut lead him.

“I like the puzzle — working the mind, trying to figure out how to beat your opponent,” he said.

Senior Matthew Ward sat across from Delp, pondering the pieces situated on the desk between them. He favored a more proactive approach.

“I enjoy suffocating the opponent's king in the corner of the board," he said. "I usually don’t have plans, but I often try to play aggressive.”

Davis, who teaches high school math, said many contenders develop a personal style for playing the game.

“I think that's one of the coolest things about chess is you can actually have a style, like a personality," he said. "You can find grandmasters who play this particular way and then you can learn and watch their games and you can kind of develop."

"It’s just like any other sport. In chess you can be a defensive player, you can be an aggressive player. Good players can adapt.”

Tristen Ramsey, a sophomore at Mansfield Senior, said playing chess has taught him about himself and the way he thinks.

“At times I can think ahead, but other times I just play at random and it's not very good," he said.

"When I do think ahead, I have pulled off some very good moves. But other times I think too hard about what the opponent's going to do and just fry my brain.”

Hayden Johnson, an eighth grader at Mansfield Middle School, described himself as an energetic player. His classmate Soriano Saavedra described his style as aggressive.

“I use mind games when I play chess," Saavedra said.

Both Kentosh and Davis believe chess helps teach students to think critically, analyze possibilities and assess risks.

"If they really get into it, I believe it's going to carry over into the classroom," Kentosh said.

Kentosh said chess clubs can also offer a sense of identity to students who aren't already part of team or student organization.

"Some people just want to be a part of something. There’s some people that haven’t necessarily found their niche," he said.