Sports. What are sports? Is chess a sport? Some of you would say no. Maybe even the definition of sports would say no. However, the Olympics recognize chess as a sport and so do I. While it’s not a physical sport, at all. It does take a lot of intelligence and practice, which are some of the hardest parts of any sport. Chess pushes your brain to think harder, faster, and deeper than anything else. 

Timpview has a chess club, that was founded by Theo Crosby. I interviewed Theo for insight into this complex game. Theo has played chess for a long time, I have played him many times ( I never won). When asked why he decided to take this beloved game of his and make it into a club he responded “Timpview had so many clubs, I remember looking as a freshman and sophomore for the chess club, but there was no chess club. So I made… at first I only saw myself playing it, but others joined, and actually a lot were better than me”. Theo realized that he wasn’t alone and his love was shared, only hidden. So when he and his cousin Nicky Bracken founded the chess club Timpview’s underground chess wizes started popping up.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise however seeing as 70% of the world’s adults have played chess at some point in their lives, and 605 million play regularly. Almost double than the United States total population. Again that’s only adults, unlike the students at the chess club. Who knows how many more kids play chess, who knows how many kids are reading this thinking “I want to play chess?” Well, you can!! 

The chess club practices every Wednesday after school. You can come meet new people, learn a new sport, and compete. That’s right, the chess club is “planning on going to the Utah High School State Championship in May. If we got enough people to go we could totally win.”-Theo