Northwest brings home another chess title
Team wins its second national championships in three years
by Melissa A. Chadwick
Staff Writer
One of the most successful teams at Northwest High School in Germantown never steps foot on a grassy field, court or track.
Instead, the team members sit at a table, eyes fixated on a checkered board for hours at a time, flexing not their biceps and glutes, but their brains.
‘‘You can take up to 15 to 20 minutes on a single move,” said senior Eric Wisniewski, 18, captain of Northwest’s chess team. ‘‘You can get physically tired just by thinking so in-depth… . It helps me think in general. Different problem-solving skills.”
On April 15, the chess team took home its second U.S. Chess Federation national championship in its division in three years and is home to single co-national champions in the under 900 division, and co-national champion in the under 1200 division.
During the championships, a match usually lasts up to four hours.
The 41-member team at Northwest, which formed in 2001, has collected so many trophies that two display cases in the school’s hallway cannot fit them all. The rest of the trophies sit on top of shelves in a storage room connected to the room where team members practice day after school.
Many of the players, 25 of who went to the championships in Kansas City, had never played chess until they got to Northwest. Practice is the name of the game every day at lunch, when they roll out plastic chessboards. The team also spends two hours practicing after school twice a week.
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So awesome!