But, before I tell how many checkmates we inflicted on Sanger Middle School, here’s a brief recap of my Strickland chess club lesson plans for weeks ten through twelve. On March 9, week 10, we had only three students so we played bughouse. (I played too, to make it four players). On March 16, there was no chess due to Spring Break. On March 23, I was not there since I was presenting at UTD.

March 30, week 11, was the after-school talent show, when two of our chess students performed Anthem from the musical Chess, another chess student was part of a dance group, and another submitted artwork. April 6, week 12, was our match against Sanger Middle School. Five of my players had a lot of training with me, some this year but mostly in the two years prior when chess met three times a week during the school day. I was confident we’d win on those first five boards. Our sixth board has come to several after-school chess club meetings this year, but our seventh board only attended one prior meeting. And our eighth and ninth boards were recruited on the day of the match from after-school soccer.

The top Sanger student played our top student, the second best from Sanger played our second best, and so forth through our ninth-best students. Each student played one game as white and one game as black against his or her opponent. Final score: 16 wins, 1 draw, and 1 loss. Next, on May 1^st, is the Denton I.S.D. middle school fifth annual tournament.