School District Teams

As I talk with parents, a common issue I hear is “I’d love my child to play on a team but we don’t have enough kids in the school!”. This is evident by the number of kids that play in the MS Team Championships vs the “Mini-Teams”.

We are proposing that the primary mission of the Middle School Chess Association is to grow the number of kids that play in Middle School – first and foremost. We believe that with greater participation numbers, we can build a stronger program.

To achieve that goal, we are making some changes to the rules that allow teams of SCHOOL DISTRICTS to be formed if there are not enough kids in a single school to form a team. By banding together more kids, we hope to make Team Chess more accessible to Middle School kids in the State.

This is a break from the past and we are also putting in place safeguards to prevent the creation of “Super-Teams”. We are planning to empower a committee with the discretion of investigating and making determinations on accusations of creating “Super-Teams” so that all will have a fair advantage. We hope to appeal to “common sense” solutions as opposed to overly legalistic approaches.

This board is the forum for this discussion. Please place your thoughts and opinions here so that we can involve everyone in the process of coming to the best possible solution.