Chess offers support and confidence to Washington Middle’s champs

They approach it from different angles, but 13-year-old Xander Velardo and 14-year-old Hien Duong have found solace and success in the ancient game of chess.

Xander has played since he was 6. Hien had to be coaxed to pick up a pawn for the first time last year. He makes his moves quickly. She ponders every step. Even their hair goes in different directions: His tousled curls defy gravity, her silky locks fall straight past her shoulders.

But the pair wound up together as winners at the 2016 National Junior High (K-9) School Chess Championship in Indianapolis, with Xander in first place and Hien second in the unrated division in April. They led Washington Middle School to its fourth team championship in the last five years.

Earlier this month, the teens took time to reflect on what chess means to them and play a quick game alongside their teacher, Roderick “Eric” Floro, who is teaching chess as part of a summer program at the school in McCully.

Asked whether chess has changed the way she thinks of herself, Hien laughed with an emphatic “Yes!” Her coach marveled at “the progression from how she was at the beginning, when she didn’t even want to play, to the confident young woman she is now.”

Hien used to be so shy that she would just watch the other kids play. Toward the end of seventh grade, she tagged along to a tournament and Floro persuaded her to play, saying he’d cover her entry fee.

It did not go well.

“I kind of lost every game,” she shrugged. “That was life. I just felt like, ‘OK, I’m really bad at this, so maybe I shouldn’t play chess at all.’”

She decided to take chess anyway as an elective in eighth grade. But she had to miss many club practices to watch her little brother, 4, and sister, 6, after school.

“There was a lot of family problems at home, so I had to come home to help take care of my siblings,” she said. Still, she relished the times she got to play and gradually built her confidence.

“Chess gave me something to focus on other than school and work,” she said. “It made my days more enjoyable. It was a release space for me. … I like the community itself, the teacher, the students with their super-challenging attitudes.”

For Xander, too, chess has given him a stronger sense of self and an entree into a supportive community. Since he was little, he has loved playing strategic games at home, whether cards, “Connect Four” or chess. But connecting with his peers at school was harder.

“In elementary school, I tried to dodge all emotional kind of things, so I just hung around the corners of school,” he said.

Floro, a math teacher who coaches cross country and chess, has watched Xander’s confidence grow, especially at the national tournament as he beat one opponent after another.

“When he won the whole thing, he was just bursting, beaming, but you could tell he was restrained,” Floro said. “I said, ‘You’re a national champion, what are you thinking or feeling?’”

“He says, ‘Ummm, inside I’m jumping up and down, but I’m holding it back because I don’t want to make the other kids feel bad.’”

Floro brought 10 students to the competition, subsidizing those who couldn’t afford it with community donations. Also on the winning team were Aristotle Bautista, Samara Cohen, Gyuyun Kim, Hanseong Kim, Yuto Matsuba, Skye Miyauchi, Ryan Nosaka and Max Sato.

The roots of chess reach back more than 1,000 years and it remains popular worldwide. An online survey by YouGov, an Internet market research firm, found that 15 percent of adults in the United States had played chess at least once over the past year.

Xander’s mother, Angie Hanai, said that it makes sense to learn the game as a youngster.

“It gives them a head start on strategic thinking,” she said. “They’re disciplined. It teaches them patience. It’s a good skill to start at an early age.”

Floro learned how to play before he learned to read, growing up in Michigan, where his father and uncles would bring out the chess board at family parties. “In the Filipino community, chess is pretty popular,” he said.

This year, he invited his parents, who live in the Detroit metro area, to check out the national championship. They were thrilled to see the vast hall filled with youngsters at their chessboards.

“It was particularly gratifying for me to have them come down and see what I do because my dad taught me how to play chess,” Floro said. “He was just having a blast. You look around, and there is chess just everywhere. Even though mom is not really into chess, I could tell she was really happy.”

Like proud grandparents, his folks cheered on the crew and treated them to celebratory meals.

“If I had kids,” Floro mused, “this is what I think it would be like.”