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UTB-CBIRD Report: “At The Crossroads” Education & Training 83
Changing Perceptions of the Lower Rio Grande Valley
Chess Champions from Cameron County
The City of Brownsville has an “epidemic” of chess going on… It all
became visible when Morningside Elementary School’s Chess Team
started winning. This is a disadvantaged school by every measure, where
the kids’ parents are fortunate to graduate from high school. They are
called the “Green Shirts,” because that’s the school color, and their
elementary school teachers are their coaches. Their chess team – kids
third grade and under – won the Brownsville City Championship. People
were in awe.
They went on to win the Regional Championship, then the Texas State
Championship, which meant they went to Nationals (these kids had never
been on an airplane before.) They lost the National Championship by half
a point to New York’s Hunter College Elementary School (a school that
only accepts the top three percent of the state’s children) whose coach
had also coached Bobbie Fischer. The press asked who coached the
“Green Shirts,” and the kids said, “Well, one day it’s Armando, and
sometimes it’s Jose…”
At that point, people thought this was a one-time thing: an anomaly. But
now the Brownsville Texas Chess Team is regularly one of the top five
teams in national chess tournaments. Last year, the newly formed
UTB/TSC Chess Team went to State and took third place.
What’s going on here? I think it is linked to being bilingual from a very
young age; it stimulates the brain. Learning chess is just like a third
language. Perhaps these skills are also transferable to learning science
and math – who knows? But it is interesting to consider in light of all the
young bilingual students and talent in the Valley.
Juliet Garcia,
President UTB/TSC
Interview, August 28, 2002
One Region -- One Future