LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!

THE FIRST WEIBEL CHESS TEAM, 1989

I am always amazed with my encounters with the past. I guess the longer I live the more encounters I will have. After a family dinner, Susan and I went with my son and his wife, Micah and Ivy, to the new house they will move into in a month or so. They needed to spread some ant spray—or should I call it anti-ant spray. Ivy had told me that a woman who lives across the street told her I was her chess coach at Weibel back when chess started there. We went across the street to meet her. Her name was Jennifer Cheung. I had a lot of Jennifer’s in chess in the early 90’s and so I wasn’t sure which one she was. When she told me that she was maybe the only one of her group who was still alive it clicked. Ugly tragedy hit that first group of students I had at Weibel. The first came when a boy named Rathnam was killed with his grandparents in Taxi cab accident in India. Then a few years later Scott Ferguson was killed when a speeding bus hit his bike on a Boy Scout trip returning from Yosemite. Another Jennifer committed suicide and Eric Chen died from a rapidly spreading cancer. This was the group that won us our first few State Championships. I realized that the Jennifer I was talking to was the first Weibel girl to enter USCF chess tournaments and set the stage for a dynasty of great Weibel girl players.

In the Spring of 1989 four players went to San Rafael to compete in our first ever State Championships. Weibel won its first team trophy due to my first grade son, Micah, winning the K-3 Championship division. His points along with those of Rathnam Kumarappan, also in first grade, Jennifer Cheung in third grade and Tov Fisher-Kirshner in Kindergarten got us a fifth place. That trophy launched a dynasty. We were very excited as you can see from the inserted photo.

I expanded the program at Weibel and I took a larger group of players to the States in 1990. In that group I had two great Mission San Jose players—Joe Lonsdale III and Kevin Simler.  MSJE had not yet started a chess team. I learned to my surprise that I could not use them as competitors for Weibel. I was a novice to chess competition. Yet, even without the two great MSJE players training with me at Weibel, we won our first of many State Championships.

I showed Jennifer the photo I had on my iPhone of that first Weibel Team. She was thrilled and I could see all her positive memories returning. She has two daughters now the youngest of whom is just a touch older than my grandson, Elizur.  Perhaps her daughter and Elizur will start a chess dynasty in their Fremont
 school when they start there—Glenmore. Maybe they will become the fifth Fremont school to win a Spring Nationals that had their seeds planted from the Weibel program. Hopkins, Mission San Jose, Weibel and Gomes are the four. Time will tell.