Chess takes root in Central Valley farm town, blossoms into a state title for Latino boys high school team
In the bigger chess world, Mendota High’s championship is nothing striking. But for people living in a world of packing houses and field labor, the town’s success in a game of intellect and imagination has resonated.
May 19, 2011
“We never had to worry about gloating before because we never won before,” said Vaness French, coach of the Knuckleheads, otherwise known as the Mendota High School chess team.
The nickname refers not to human blockheadedness, but to the cylinders on vintage Harley-Davidson motorcycle engines known for their durability.
Drought-weary Mendota — a Central Valley town of stilled machinery and packinghouses surrounded by industrial agriculture — is the kind of place that requires durability just to survive. Out here, even sunlight seems hard.
Each week, at least a third of the town’s families receive a bag of fruit and vegetables — and, if it’s a good day, a chicken — provided by churches and food banks. In this city of 10,000, unemployment hovers around 45%.
So when a group of high school boys, each with his own world of worries and yearning and coached by a man in ill health, brought a state championship home, the reaction was joyous astonishment.
Councilman Joseph Riofrio owns a small market on the main street and knows how many chess team members count out pennies to buy a snack. At a City Hall ceremony honoring the team, he could barely keep his voice from breaking.
“In Mendota, we’re known for the wrong things: not having water, being such a poor community. We’re surrounded by abundance — we’re the cantaloupe capital of the world. But still, it’s dust, it’s dirt, it’s hard out here. And for the Mendota chess team to be the best in the state after playing affluent communities — kids with private chess tutors — it’s unfathomable,” he said.
The 12-member team has been toasted by the Fresno County Board of Supervisors and invited to throw out the first pitch at a minor league baseball game. On Monday, the students traveled to Sacramento, where they were honored on the Assembly floor for placing first in the Premier Division at the CalChess State Championships. For many of them, it was the farthest they had ever traveled from Mendota.
French, 45, is a black man who doesn’t speak Spanish. When the 100% Latino team acts up, he yells in French. He thinks it’s a good way to get their attention.
He is, by his own estimation, a middling-at-best chess player. The last time he was around tournament chess before coming to Mendota, he was in junior high.
He wasn’t at a high point in his life when he arrived 10 years ago. He was so broke a friend had to pay for gas for him to drive 40 miles from Fresno to volunteer in a class taught by chess master Artak Akopian, then Fresno’s highest-ranked player.
Within a year, Akopian left for Los Angeles, and the school district asked French to take his place. He took the position on condition that the chess club would become a team and compete against other schools.
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This is fantastic.