State Elementary or Middle School Champs????

Based on feedback from a number of parents, we moved the MS Individual Championships to the same location and venue as the Elementary School Championships. As word starts to filter out, we have received some concerns that we are “competing” with the Elementary Championships.  We assure you that this is not so.

The reason for moving the event in this manner was to allow the greatest number of players to participate in Middle School Events. Last year, there were only 30 kids that supported the event. By moving it to our current location, we expect more kids to be able to participate, making it a better event for everyone.

We also recommend that if your child qualifies for the State Elementary event, you support that one. You are certainly welcome to attend the MS Event if your child is in Grades 5-9 but we want to stress that we believe we take a second seat  to the Elementary event. We are working very closely with this year’s Elementary Organizer and we are working hard to make sure that the entire community is served with high quality chess.

Some folks have asked “Why do you include 5th Grade?”. “There is no clear definition for “Middle” or “Junior High” school in Washington State.   We started our search with the source of the NW Rating System.  From there, we checked a large number of school web sites to see what grades they supported. We found several that serviced 5th – 8th grade and called themselves “Middle School”. There was also 1 that included 9th grade. We chose to be as inclusive as possible and  allow Grade 5, 6 and 9 in based on that rational. We could have been more exclusionary and created a complicated set of rules to exclude a number of kids from playing but we decided that the purpose was to get more kids to play, not less. We hope that clears things up.

One last note – The Middle School events are all non-profit events. Our objective is to make sure that any surplus is put back into the community. Like WHSCA, no one is here to make money off the event – just assure that kids can have a great time.

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to post them here. If you have a question, chances are that someone else is thinking it, too……