With careful consideration of what the next move will be, he stared at the board. He placed his hand on the castle, moved it three spaces left and calmly said, “Checkmate.”

Staring at the board was only a small part of what went down during the Learn to Play Chess session during the second annual Community Day. With Ms. Emily Bancroft and the Chess Club as the hosts of the activity, the first session consisted of about 15 students.

Most students already knew how to play, leaving more playing time rather than going over instruction. The leaders of Chess Club included Vladimer Kellachow, Nicholas Fraver, Dhruv Tripathi, Tony O’Shea and Adam Palmer. This is the third consecutive year of the Chess Club.

The Chess Club holds tournaments within the school. Last year, a tournament was held for four days which included some Hershey Middle School students who were a part of the Middle School Chess Club as well.

Jackson Vargo, Junior at HHS, attended the session. However, he is not a part of the Chess Club. He claimed that he would like to join but doesn’t know a lot about the game.

“I like how it’s a thinking game,” said Vargo

Tony O’Shea and Vargo were opponents during the session. O’Shea has been a part of the club for three years and enjoys the game very much. He and Kellachow, both Juniors at HHS, started the club their freshman year.

Kellachow was the main leader and created the club after he moved from Maryland to HHS. He explained that his old school had a Chess Club that he enjoyed being a part of. This prompted Kellachow to join the Chess Club at HHS. Kellachow said that finding people to join wasn’t too hard since he had multiple friends already interested.  Kellachow also said since Chess Club has a sort of negative connotation, many people were hesitant.

Referring to the activities the Chess Club does during the year, Kellachow said, “We have so much.”

Emily Bancroft, math teacher at HHS, was the advisor of the club. She stated that she doesn’t know much about chess but decided to advise the club when Kellachow said he needed one in order to start the club. She said that the club sometimes plays other games and that it is fun to be a part of the group. Bancroft said that the boards were donated to the club my Civics and German teacher, Mrs. Collins. Collins was the previous advisor of the club before it ended and restarted.

The club meets once a week, generally on Wednesdays and they allow any new members who would like to join.

Kellachow said, “My favorite part of the game is being challenged.”