Checkmate Success: Lakefield College School Hosts Inaugural Chess Tournament Organized by Amrit ’23

Lakefield College School recently held its inaugural Chess Tournament, organized and run by the exceptional efforts of Grade 12 student, Amrit ’23. The tournament brought together students from all grade levels to showcase their strategic thinking and chess skills in a competitive setting. Amrit's leadership and dedication made the event a resounding success, fostering a sense of camaraderie and intellectual challenge among the participants. This memorable tournament highlighted the vibrant chess community at Lakefield College School and set the stage for future chess competitions.

When I first came to LCS in Grade 9, I was really excited about a chess club with numerous players, an annual chess tournament, and a proper system in place to facilitate practice chess games throughout the year. However, when I joined the existing chess club at the time, I found out that the club had three members and there were no annual tournaments. For those reasons, the club was shut down that same year. 

As a Grade 12 student, I wanted to ensure that I laid the groundwork and built up a strong enough foundation for chess at the school so that future students would have the opportunities that I didn’t. So, I established the chess club at the school and at its peak, it had around 19 students with non-club members consistently dropping in to play some games. In the middle of the year, I identified an opportunity to set up the first-ever LCS chess tournament and I took it. Initially, the plan was to set up an interscholastic chess tournament, however, due to this being the first tournament hosted by LCS and with exam season just around the corner, we settled for an in-school tournament. 

This is the first time that there has been a large and functional chess club at this school, which is very exciting. On average, the chess club has more members than most other clubs. Since this was the first time running a chess club of this size, I’ve learned a lot of new things in terms of leadership and structure and the use of online chess platforms. I believe that the chess program/club at LCS currently possesses more than enough resources to accommodate a larger number of students interested in the club for the following years. 

The popularity of chess had been steadily rising since I was in Grade 10, but in my Grade 12 year, the popularity of chess had increased tremendously. In fact, I’ve seen students playing chess on the bus to and from school, I’ve seen chess sets being placed outside of the library because it got too noisy in the library! I expect student interest in chess to continue to increase steadily over the next few years.

I’ve learned that whenever you’re planning a tournament or other event, on paper everything seems perfect, but then in practicality when you’re actually setting things up in real life, not everything goes according to plan. From that, I learned how to adapt quickly to changes in planning. Overall this was a great learning experience for me, as I was able to try new things and see what works and what doesn’t work when running a large event.