The approach of T&T Chess Association's annual general meeting must surely be a time of reflection. What positive or lasting progress, for instance, has the sport made over the year now ending?
And what changes and measures can the chess community now implement to move the royal game forward? DR expects that these vital questions will find effective answers in the contributions and decisions which member clubs will make at the AGM coming off at the San Fernando Girls Anglican School on Sunday April 12 starting at 3 pm.
The meeting, DR expects, will record the history-making achievements of two youngsters, national champion Vishnu Singh, T&T's first International Master, and Javanna Smith, female champion and our country's first Woman Fide Master. At the same time, it is expected that the AGM will pronounce conclusively on the contentious issues that have arisen over the failure of the Association to nominate IM Singh for selection as the First Citizens Bank Sports Foundation's Player of the Year and the failure to declare WFM Smith as the Association's Player of the Year.
DR also expects that the AGM will receive a comprehensive update on the Chess-in-Schools programme which has been pending over the last three years. This programme, as DR has been told, is drawning nearer to fruition after completion of the pilot project conducted among the schools of county Victoria. The expectation is that the CIS effort will produce not only a significant expansion of the sport in T&T but also notably assist the education process, helping our young people to think more analytically and productively.
But while these matters are important, clearly the most vital issue before the AGM has to be changes in the Association itself, changes aimed at making the national chess body more collaborative, more responsive, more progressive and more determined to maintain operating discipline among member clubs.
The fervent promise made after the last AGM to work more closely with affiliated clubs never came to reality; no direction, no assistance was given the Association's members to put their houses in order and to organise their essential activities.
But even more delinquent has been the total indifference given to the laborious exercise undertaken by Clayton Gomez to reform the Association's long outdated constitution.
An experienced chess club executive, Gomez spent endless hours reviewing the T&TCA constitution, conferring with knowledgeable stalwarts, and drawing up a long and comprehensive list of reforms to make administration of the sport more effective. His recommendations were submitted more than two years ago but, it would seem, they were comprehensively ignored by the administration.The reason for this, of course, is the self-imposed isolation in which the executive chose to operate.
Looking back, it becomes clear that the Association has failed to appreciate the broader picture, to modernise its structure and expand its scope.
Indeed, had Gomez' reforms been adopted, the injustice done to the country's young IM and WFM would hardly have occurred. One of Gomez' key recommendations is the establishment of a technical committee of mixed membership responsible for the selection of sports personalities, chess teams to represent the country and the creation of a Chess League to organise and run an inter-club tournament.
Ultimately then, the key question for the coming AGM is, who we go put? The sport of chess, as experts across the globe have discovered, has the unique potential of enhancing the cognitive ability of young people and thus helping to build a better society.
Surely promoting this benefit should be one of the major concerns of those who accept responsibility for guiding the destiny of the sport over the coming year.
They must see chess not simply as another competitive game but also as a social activity with the potential to assist in the development of our country. Hopefully we can find such administrators.