Here is a question that has generated a lot of heated discussion on the calchess.org forums.
It is gernerally understood that the national scholastic championships (both spring and fall) are grade based…not age based. But the rules specify age parameters which are “upper bounds”.
Our question is would it ever be ok for a 4th grader to play as a 3rd grader in a national scholastic championship?
According to one of our members, there have been many cases where NTD’s ruled it was ok for kids in higher grades to play in lower grades, in the cases of when they had skipped grades in their regular schooling. Also it was claimed that a kid can choose which grade to play the first time they play in a national championship as long as they fit within the age parameters. Is this correct??
To me the rule clearly states that all players must be in the current grade in which the grade level they play…i quote the rule “Our national events are grade based and require all players to play in a section that allows for their current grade.”
So again my question is in what case would it be possible (if ever at all) for a 4th grader to play as a 3rd grader in one of our national championships.
Please advise.
Here is the rule in its entirety for reference:
2.3 Age requirements: the following ages are as of September 1 of the school year in which the competition takes place. The age requirements are considered upper bounds for each grade and should not be used for home school and virtual school students. Our national events are grade based and require all players to play in a section that allows for their current grade.
Kindergarten: under age 7
1st Grade: Under age 8
2nd Grade: Under age 9
3rd Grade: Under age 10
4th Grade: Under age 11
5th Grade: Under age 12
6th Grade: Under age 13
7th Grade: Under age 14
8th Grade: Under age 15
9th Grade: Under age 16
10th Grade: Under age 17
11th Grade: Under age 18
12th Grade: Under age 19
Collegiate: Under age 26
12.3.1 There shall only be one year of eligibility per grade level, except for pre-schoolers who may play for more than one year as a Kindergartener or college or university students who may play for more than one year in the collegiate section as long as all requirements are met.
I think the key is the stipulation that a player can have only one year of eligibility for each section. If a boy has never played in the 3rd grade section before and is under the age limit, he can play in that section.
Some parents delay putting their children in school to give them an extra year of maturity, which would produce the same situation, wouldn’t it?
My understanding is that a player has to play according to the grade he/she is currently in. To do otherwise would open a whole can of worms that I don’t think we want to deal with.
You have the the children with fall birthdays whose parents have to decide to:
a. start them in kindergarten as a 4 year old turning 5 later that fall.
b. wait until they’re 5, and turning 6.
Would these children whose parents opted for a. get to play as in K-3 as a 4th grader? Then in 7th grade get to play K-6? Coaches having these types of choices could have a field day being able to field a stronger team because a player is eligible to play as 3rd grader based on age.
Leaving aside the issue of home-schooled students (which raises many other issues), I think if a student is attending the 4th grade in a school, that student should have to play as a 4th grader in a grade-based event.
So a child that started school late or got left back a grade gets to play against players that are younger? Hmmm… Maybe things ought to be based on age instead of grade. Instead of a 3rd grade champion you’d have a 9 year-old champion.
Besides, each state will have different cut-off dates determining when a child should start school. At least it has been different in all the places I have lived.
The only exception that I have ever seen was for a homeschooled child. The child was studying ninth grade material at an age that for most children would have been sixth grade. In our state we allowed him to compete as a 6th grader.
No set of rules is going to optimally cover every possible situation, because with over 100,000 schools in the country (and several million home-schooled kids), there are just too many possibilities.
The goal should be rules that are easy to interpret consistently and are, overall, reasonably fair. (IMHO most of the really challenging problems are with students who are outside of traditional K-12 model schools.)
A student who starts school late will have some developmental advantages over his or her classmates but some issues as well. Why complicate things by making different rules for those students with regards to eligibility for USCF national events?
A student who is held back (how common is that these days?) should be entitled to the same privileges as his or her new classmates.
The reasons vary for why a child started late, or got held back. Often the reasons have to do with maturity level or learning issues. It may be that a child that is year older the his classmates is functioning on the same level as his year younger classmates. I don’t think a child like that should be forced to play in the next grade up. I also don’t think parents should be required to explain why their child was left back or repeated.
There have always been stories about young football players in Texas (and probably elsewhere) who are held back before getting to the HS level so that they have a better chance of succeeding at the HS level and then at a college scholarship.
While high schools tend to have fairly strict four year eligibility rules, as far as I know the pewee football programs do not.
However, I’ve never heard of a budding chess player being held back to enhance his chances at the National HS in 3-4 years. If anything, players like that are more apt to skip a grade than repeat one.
So according to Michael Aigner who has extensive experience as a coach at the scholastic national championships, several NTD’s including Carol Jarecki have ruled at differnt national championsihps to allow kids to play down in grade level because they had skipped a grade in their regular school. So this means we have had kids playing in different grades then what they are currently in. So again as our example, we have had cases of 4th graders playing in k-3 sections.
I think the rule is spelled out clearly enough to prevent this…but because this rule is being broken…perhaps it should be spelled out more clearly. If a 4th grader actually wins a k-3 national title for example…there could be a public outcry and perhaps an embarrassing disqualification.
Yes, I met a child on the way to the airport after the tournament who appeared to me to be in 3rd grade. He’s 9 years old, and is actually in 5th grade. His mother said he skipped.
Last weekend one of my players playing in the K-6 U1000 section had an opponent who needed to shave. All of my parents commented on it. Since the USCF has the birthdates of all players, is there a check made that their ages are below the cutoff for the various grade-based sections?
I have no personal knowledge of what the TDs have done, presumably the Scholastic Council knows what kinds of exceptions are being made.
Yes, there are some ‘sanity checks’ in the registration program for age compatibility with the grade level, but they’re fairly liberal. Even then, I think we’ve had to override them a few times, such as for developmentally challenged players.
I remember a player in a national event I was at some years ago who must have been 6’2" and a good 250 lbs. I think he was 17. He also had Downs Syndrome and was still in the 7th grade, and rated under 1000 as I recall.
BTW, the youngest graduate at the University of Nebraska earlier this month was not quite 17 yet, so age and grade don’t always correlate well.
If anything, players like that are more apt to skip a grade than repeat one.