2001 Texas State Scholastic Championships
The Good, The Bad and The Out of Control
First the good…
Congrats to the winners of the 2001 Texas State Scholastic Championships. Whether you took home a trophy or not, you are all winners for trying your best. The competition was strong, many friendships were formed or renewed, most enjoyed the tournament, and there were many examples of good sportsmanship.
Special kudos to Lanier Middle Schools’ players and coaches. When they tied for 1st place in the MS Championship section, but received the 2nd place trophy, they lined up down the center of the aisle to congratulate the winners on receiving the 1st place team trophy. That was sportsmanship at its best!
Now the BAD and the OUT OF CONTROL…
The reputation of scholastic chess in the state of Texas has a big red mark against it! While the Organizers, Volunteers, and Tournament Directors were busy with the business of running the tournament, hundreds of kids were reported by security to be damaging the hotel property, as well as, other businesses adjacent to the hotel.
As parents and property owners would you allow your guests to do the following?
· Break marble ash trays and planters and pull up plants from those planters
· Color on the floors, walls and windows with crayon
· Wade into your fountain and destroy the filters
· Put silly putty in a fountain pipe to stop the flow of water
· Throw rocks in your lobby at other guests
· Leave trash in your pool and laying around all over the place
· Hang on the banister until it was broken
· Break door locks
· Throw food at one another in the hallway
· Pull up flowers from a flower garden
· Trample through flower gardens and
· Ride scooters all over your property without permission
I know that I would not allow my guests to behave in this way, nor would I allow my children to do any of these things elsewhere. The list above describes only part of the damage that was done to the Wyndham Greenspoint Hotel and surrounding buildings during the tournament this past weekend. Furthermore, our kids were reported to be on other businesses’ property riding scooters, uninvited. I certainly do not like strangers using my property to amuse themselves (think of the liability); that’s what parks are for.
At any given time groups of kids were reported to be unsupervised and running wildly all over the property. I do not mean a child going up to a hotel room to meet a parent after his/her game was over…I mean running through the halls with no purpose but to entertain themselves. Since when do parents allow their children to roam around a hotel alone? This is very dangerous; we are just lucky no child wound up missing! My first reaction was to wonder where the parents and coaches were when these kids were running free, but when a building security guard asked parents not to allow their kids to play baseball in front of a $10,000 stained glass window, the security guard was yelled and cursed at by those parents. This was repeated over a dozen times by different parents for different reasons throughout the tournament. What type of message are we giving to our kids when we yell at people in authority? That behavior goes against the entire premise of the game of chess. We teach our kids to have manners both before and after a game by shaking hands with their opponent, not to mention showing good sportsmanship during the game. Do manners end when the game ends? I understand that the stress of the weekend could cause even the happiest child to get a little cranky, but being left without adult supervision or being told by their parents/guardians that they can do whatever they please no matter what the rules are is obviously a dangerous and damaging thing. I am not saying that ALL the kids acted up, but with the number of players in the tournament, added with the non-playing siblings in the building, even 10% of the children misbehaving and breaking things is too many (that’s over 130 kids!).
I hope that, as parents and coaches, we will all think about how our kids and team members behaved and will make adjustments to the way we manage our children and teams at future events. As a beginning, I feel that each and every parent or coach that allowed their children/students to be unsupervised or damage the building step up to the plate and apologize to the tournament organizers (Brad Bradford and Luis Salinas) who did all this work just for our kids to be able to play in this championship. Not to mention the huge bill the organizers have been left with due to the damage done by the players. On pages 12 and 13 in the tournament program it talks about the responsibility of the parents and coaches and specifically addresses who is responsible for supervising the players after a game is over. The hotel also issued a letter to all the participants stating the hotel rules for the weekend. Included in that letter, parents and coaches were told that it was their responsibility to chaperone the children that they were responsible for. It outlined specific rules regarding use of the elevators and behavior in and around the hotel corridors. I wonder how many people actually read the program book and hotel letter and discussed them with their team?
This event is a wonderful opportunity for the kids to play against other kids from different parts of the state. Friendships are made and renewed by many players who enjoy seeing each other at this and other state events throughout the year. It would be a shame if the TCA had to stop holding this event due to the participants’ behavior at the 2001 Texas State Scholastic Championships this year. I am certain it will be more difficult and most likely more expensive to hold this tournament in the future due to the damage done in Houston. I hope we can repair the damage done to the reputation of scholastic chess in Texas and I hope that we will all work harder in the future to take responsibility for our children -- to ensure their safety, to show respect for the facility hosting the tournament, and to show appreciation for the time and effort required of the organizers to sponsor such a well-run tournament of this magnitude.
CLICK HERE FOR RESULTS OF 2001 TEXAS SCHOLASTIC CHAMPIONSHIP