With our Awards Ceremonies on Friday May 30, 2014 we ended one of our best chess years ever. I want to say thank you again to Fahria Khan and her staff for producing this great event. It brought the perfect finish to Weibel’s 25th year of chess. The letter I sent to the Weibel Team chess community spelled out the specific details of their success. I have inserted it below for any of you who want to read it or are interested in sending your children to the Team. I cannot be as specific with details of the Weibel Chess Club members successes as they are not required to attend tournaments etc. I can only be subjective in my statement that we had a great year.I feel we had a great year because from my observations those new to the Club played far better chess than they did at the start. I saw it and many parents commented on how their children were now defeating them at home. My instructors noted how they did not feel they were simply babysitting kids. The children, they said, appeared excited about chess. This year I had far fewer players drop out for the second semester than any other year I remember. I think it was only five and two of them moved to other locations.
I hope to see a good number of this year’s players back for next year. The return of players keeps Weibel from being a revolving door program like so many other chess programs. What I mean by that is most other chess schools offer the same skill instruction each year because they get a new batch of students—few return. Weibel, both in Club and Team, is able to offer various classes for almost every chess level.
That being said, I do hope many of you will consider moving your children to the Team. I want to emphasize that we really need new girl blood. After this year we are losing our wonderful girls Team who have won so many honors. We need to build our base again so we can continue our national reputation as the girls team to beat. Also, to show, as we have done in the past, that when we win the open nationals or place near the top our team has girls who are instrumental in those successes. This takes me to another building block for our Team—I have created a special Kindergarten Team class for next year on Fridays. Joyce Laforteza, who is known for her excellence in producing chess success with young children and has a California teaching credential and experience teaching in Elementary School will be the instructor in that class. I hope you will pass the information to any parents who have Kindergarten children who know how the pieces move and who love chess.
The only requirements to be on the Chess Team is the child must know how to play chess, love the game and is willing to do a little chess homework and attended a limited number of tournaments. Please be sure your child wants to be on the Team before you decide to place them there. And, if you do sign him/her up for the Team because s/he want to be there, please follow the most important requirement--that you as a parent support your child by adhering to your commitments to the Team.
For those returning to the Club—I look forward to your children enjoying and improving their chess next year. This is why we have a Club and a Team with outstanding instruction in both. We can, thereby, offer a program for your child’s personality, desires and time schedule. No matter which your child selects, as all controlled studies show, his/her critical thinking and school successes will increase. The Team only adds the competition which can also be achieved without a fixed requirement by any Club member. Translation, all chess competitions are open to players who are in the Club or the Team. In fact, there are many chess tournaments this summer if you want to see how your child feels about formal competition. You can go to http://www.CalNorthYouthChess.org/Tournaments.html or our blog, http://weibelchess.blogspot.com/, to find suitable events that fit your schedule.
The Weibel Information Sheet and Registration Form for the 2014-2015 chess year can be found at http://www.calnorthyouthchess.org/WeibelChess/Information2014-2015.html or at the tab link at http://www.WeibelChess.org.
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