Chess can make kids winners

Josue Gonzalez (8yrs) ponders his next chess move against Daniel de la Cruz (9yrs) during chess club practice at Wimauma Elem School. Principal Roy Moral (middle) has been very supportive of the kids since he played as a child, too. Now he devotes hours with the club who meets after school and helps see they all get home. The two boys were undefeated in their last chess competition. –

Club Has Students Pondering Moves
By ELAINE MARKOWITZ Tribune correspondent
Published: January 26, 2008
Updated: 01/24/2008 07:55 pm

WIMAUMA – Roy Moral, the 36-year-old principal of Wimauma Elementary School, has moved through life hobnobbing with royalty. He is up close and personal with kings, queens, knights and bishops, all miniature nobles who strut across the squares of a chess board.

Royal living was not part of his life otherwise, said the son of a Cuban immigrant father and a Honduran-born mother.

“I knew about hand-me down clothes,” he said in his office one recent morning. It was those early struggles that have helped him relate to his students, most of whom are the children of migrant farmworkers.

Moral said his father, Rogelio, first taught him to play chess.

“My dad always had a chess board at home,” he said.

“It wasn’t competitive,” he said of their games together. “It was just a pastime.”

That old pastime, long forgotten, has cropped up unexpectedly in Moral’s professional life, enabling him to introduce children to the game he loved as a child.

At two schools, Moral has used chess to teach children that they can achieve and compete. More than that – he has taught them they can be winners.

Here is the full story.