Our scholastic tournaments in this area typically award team prizes for grade levels, including prizes for primary (K-3 category). One of the school districts is smaller and has a separate building for prek-K, another building for 1-2, and another for 3-4. There has been discussion at some tournaments that the 3rd graders cannot be on the same “team” as the 1st and 2d graders, and by this reasoning the kindergartners would be on a team all by themselves. Meanwhile, students from other school districts have K-3 on the same team. This disadvantages and to some extent disheartens the students in K-3 grade. The K-3 grades at this district, although in separate buildings, all attend the same school chess club.
Does anyone have any thoughts on how the USCF rules might speak to this, or what the correct result is? Thanks!
Are these buildings on separate campuses or are they all in the same place? Do they have separate building administrations or does one person serve as principal for them all? (I’m not sure if that makes any difference in the scholastic guidelines, though.)
The problem with trying to write rules such as this is that there are so many different ways that school districts can divide up their students.
Consider three hypothetical school districts, each having 120 students in each grade from K through 6
One district has three K-6 buildings with 280 students in each building.
Another has two K-3 buildings, each with 240 students in them, and a 4-6 building with 360 students in it.
The third has one building for their 120 kindergarteners, another building for 240 1st and 2nd graders, another building for 240 3rd and 4th graders, and a fourth bulding for the remaining 240 5th and 6th graders.
Does it seem reasonable that the 480 K-3 students in this third district should be permitted to compete for team prizes against schools with as few as 160 K-3 students in them, just because of how they’re organized?
Thanks Nolan for that thoughtful answer. The 1-2 and 3-4 buildings are connected by a common cafeteria. The prek-K is about a block away.
What you say makes a good point about a building with larger numbers of kids in the same grade. However, it turns out in our case that the number of kids playing are similar to what one sees from the other schools in our area, private or public. And, the third graders are the best players, naturally. Hence, it makes sense to me that k-3 should be able to play together. If our team had double the number of kids of any other team that would be cause to reconsider.
In Oklahoma Scholastic Chess Organization tournaments we currently conform (with one exception) to the school team definition as set forth in Section 13 the USCF NATIONAL SCHOLASTIC CHESS TOURNAMENT REGULATIONS, available at uschess.org/scholastic/schol … ug2005.pdf
The exception we’ve taken is to allow home school students to become teams under their home school association, regardless of the school district they live in. There are not enough home school students in a typical school district to provide enough of a population to have a fair chance of forming a competitive team. We’ve considered using larger zones instead of school district boundaries for homeschool teams, where the homeschool student population in each zone for a specific grade range would be similar to an average sized school’s population for that grade range. However, this is a difficult issue to reach consensus on.
If the school buildings are connected (on the same campus), under the same name, and have the same administration (Principal), then the students can be on the same school team in our events. It sounds like your situation would qualify.
Depending upon the expected turnout, we usually use teams of 3 or 4 (top scores), with 2 as a minimum team for award eligibility.
It sounds like you’ve got a reasonable approach for your local events, though that may not be how those students would have to form teams for national events.
The real test will come, Ken, if you can explain to the parents of the kids from some other school(s) why they can’t combine forces, too.
Thanks, guys. I will present the issue to our local scholastic committee and leave it up to them. There are valid arguments both ways, its just that it really hampers the 1st and 2d graders not to have 3rd graders on their team, vice versa. And the kindergartners are on their own under this system. We’re the only school here in this predicament. Yet I don’t wish to make a mountain out of a molehill.
If you do opt to have your definition of team eligibility to be different from the National definition, then please STRESS to the schools that there is a difference.
The Illinois K-8 group has a different definition and some K-8 coaches have been caught by surprise when going to Nationals and finding out that their single team needs to be split up into multiple teams.
Here are a couple of comments about team composition rules.
Many parents, players, and coaches don’t realize that there are often differences between LOCAL rules, STATE rules, and NATIONAL rules. USCF rules apply only to national tournaments.
There are no USCF rules telling states or local organizers how to define a team–USCF team composition rules apply only to national tournaments.
In Texas, the Texas Chess Association and the TCA Scholastic Committee have spent YEARS refining the definition of a legitimate team. These apply only to TCA tournaments (State events and Regional events). Our homeschool rules are different from USCF rules, also, mostly because we were allowing homeschool teams long before USCF allowed them, so our rules predated theirs. I won’t quote any exact rules here, since I have been off the TCA Scholastic Committee for a couple of years now, and I no longer speak for the committee.
Local TDs can use whatever “team composition” variations they want for non-TCA tournaments, although they would be well advised to be sure that the local teams know these variations will not apply once they go to state or national tournaments.
Chess participants tend to think the rules are the same everywhere. Part of our job as TDs is to explain how and why there are differences. The rules of CHESS stay the same, but the rules of TEAM composition will vary.
Brenda Hardesty
Senior TD
Retired Chair, TCA Scholastic Committee
12662345
There’s something about team composition that has bugged me for years.
In some events considered both individual and team, the top four performances by players from a school are added together and that is considered the “team” result from that school. So, a school with many players always has this artificial advantage for team trophies over a school with fewer participants. I think team composition should always be determined in advance. Wouldn’t it be fairer that way.
If you pre-determine which four players count for the team score then that is the equivalent of telling the rest of the players that they are “not really” on the team. Most organizers are hesitant to do that. If you opt to have schools designate multiple teams then those schools that don’t happen to have multiples of four players still end up with some players not “on the team”.
It is a point to be discussed, but I personally prefer the current practice.
In local events, I have seen very small, strong teams of 2-4 trounce teams that have 8 to 15 kids who are not strong.
If you predetermine which four kids are on a team, then either you allow multiple teams from a school (thus the strong team may take home ALL the trophies) or you allow only one team per school (suddenly your participants drop drastically, because the non-team members don’t bother coming).
Wow! Thanks Brenda for the thoughtful information. I have not found any rules on the TCA site at all. I must not be clicking on the right place. But most of the scholastic tournaments here in Corpus Christi are non-TCA so it is good to know that it is fine to vary the team definition. I will see what the consensus is when we meet in a month or so.
As for the comments about size of team, I have personally also seen a strong 4 person team consistently beat out much larger teams, and I also believe it benefits the weaker members of the team to share in the prize. Chess is the great equalizer of games.
There have been efforts to get the detailed team composition and other scholastic rules posted on the website clearly. We started such a project when I was on the committee, and I know the following chair also worked on it. However, I just looked at the website and I don’t see them. You might email the scholastic chair and ask if and where they are posted. His name and email:
