Ex­perts around the world have hailed the val­ue of chess in boost­ing the aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance of young peo­ple. As a con­se­quence, they have ar­gued con­sis­tent­ly for in­tro­duc­ing the game as a reg­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ty in schools, whether on or off the cur­ricu­lum. In ac­cept­ing the ex­perts' view, the T&T Chess As­so­ci­a­tion's new­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent Quintin Cabralis has made this thrust a part of the As­so­ci­a­tion's de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme which he sub­mit­ted re­cent­ly to the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs. "But while this is part of our plan, and we are hop­ing to reach as many schools and pro­duce as many young play­ers as pos­si­ble in the first year, there is still a ques­tion we would like to have set­tled.

"And that is the mat­ter of mea­sure­ment; how can we de­ter­mine the ex­tent to which chess as­sists the ed­u­ca­tion process; how, for ex­am­ple, is the game help­ing to lift stu­dents from one lev­el to the next?". To find the yard­stick may re­quire some ob­ser­va­tion and com­par­a­tive study as the pro­gramme in schools gets go­ing, says Cabralis. The As­so­ci­a­tion, how­ev­er, can safe­ly re­ly on the view of one of the world's best known pro­fes­sion­als, GM Su­san Pol­gar whose Sun­set Bay Acad­e­my in Cal­i­for­nia is de­vot­ed to this very pur­pose. "Count­less stud­ies," she says, "have shown that chess can help de­vel­op crit­i­cal think­ing that can be used in oth­er ar­eas of a child's life." Pol­gar adds: "Ac­cord­ing to re­search, tests scores im­proved by 17.3 per­cent for stu­dents reg­u­lar­ly en­gaged in chess class­es, com­pared with on­ly 4.6 per­cent for chil­dren par­tic­i­pat­ing in oth­er forms of en­riched ac­tiv­i­ties.

"In ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 na­tions across the globe, in­clud­ing Brazil, Venezuela, Chi­na, Italy, Is­rael, Rus­sia and Greece, chess is in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the coun­try's scholas­tic cur­ricu­lum. Just as ath­let­ics are a part of the re­quired agen­da at schools in the US, chess has been that way in Eu­ro­pean and oth­er schools abroad." The As­so­ci­a­tion's plan for de­vel­op­ing the sport is just one of the sev­er­al projects that have kept the new ex­ec­u­tive busy since it took of­fice at the end of Ju­ly. "The plan is a di­ver­si­fied one," said Cabralis, "in­clud­ing the im­por­tant is­sue of reg­u­lar ex­po­sure of our play­ers to in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion." One vi­tal item, he added, is the es­tab­lish­ment of a na­tion­al coach­ing sys­tem ad­min­is­tered by a head coach. In ad­di­tion, the As­so­ci­a­tion has met the dead­line for sub­mit­ting its sub­ven­tion re­quest for the next fi­nan­cial year start­ing this month.

Al­so, arrange­ments were made to send teams to the CAC and PanAm ju­nior cham­pi­onships and to hold the To­ba­go qual­i­fi­er in Au­gust at the Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School. And now the As­so­ci­a­tion is pre­sid­ing over the eleven round fi­nals of the na­tion­al cham­pi­onship be­ing held at the John Don­ald­son In­sti­tute in Port-of-Spain. "As a com­plete­ly new ex­ec­u­tive, we have had to start from scratch to or­gan­ise the af­fairs of the sport, in­clud­ing plans for its fu­ture de­vel­op­ment," says Cabralis, "the pe­ri­od was stress­ful, but we man­aged suc­cess­ful­ly to meet all our dead­lines." When he was elect­ed to lead the T&TCA, Cabralis said he saw it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to take chess in­to a new era of de­vel­op­ment. He im­me­di­ate­ly de­clared a pol­i­cy of "in­clu­sion" as an means to end the hos­til­i­ty and dis­uni­ty of the past.

"We are off on a new jour­ney. The road is long and still dif­fi­cult. Na­tion­wide recog­ni­tion for chess is still a dream. "To help us on this jour­ney, I would like to ap­peal for the widest and fullest sup­port for the As­so­ci­a­tion's ini­tia­tives, and that in­cludes the as­sis­tance of spon­sors." Cabralis is al­so head of a fam­i­ly that sets an ex­am­ple in its de­vo­tion to the sport. His 14-year-old son, Keron, now mak­ing his sec­ond bid for the na­tion­al ti­tle, is the coun­try's most suc­cess­ful ju­nior. His charm­ing daugh­ter Coreen, a UWI grad­u­ate, is now serv­ing a sec­ond term as T&TCA sec­re­tary. And, in terms of moral sup­port, there could hard­ly be a more ar­dent and faith­ful com­pan­ion than his wife Er­i­ca. Dou­ble Rooks wish­es him well.