As a new school year begins at Elder High School, new traditions are bound to begin along with it. A new tradition that has begun this year at Elder is the brand-new Chess Team. However, the team is classified as an esports team as the team practices and plays their matches on the most popular online chess platform chess.com. Instead of the traditional over the board chess, players can use the website to play games in real time against real opponents in many different ways.

To learn more about the team, I decided to interview the eldest member of the team, senior Nicholas Gutzwiller ’23. The first question that I asked him was how often the team meets. He told me that the teams meet every Tuesday, and the first match will happen on September 20^th. I then asked him what sets apart the chess team from other clubs and organizations at Elder. His response was that the Elder is just better. He claimed, “We have some absolute dogs on the team this year and we plan on putting on some shows.” If this response does not show the superior skill of Elder’s chess team, then I do not know what does. I also asked him how many members the team has, and he said that the team currently has around ten members. He then said the team is always looking to add new members, and “especially seniors since I am the only one right now”.

To wrap up the interview, I asked Gutzwiller how people that are looking to join the Elder chess team can go about doing so. He explained that it was a very simple process, as he said “You just need to go talk to Mr. Evert. It is a pretty simple process, and we will be glad to add talent”.

After this interview, I gained a lot of knowledge on the new Elder chess team, and

I hope that I have successfully shared as much of that knowledge as I can. As Gutzwiller said, it is very easy to join the team, so anyone at Elder who is looking to join has no excuse not to. The team is a new way that students can share a fun time with other students who have an interest in the timeless game of chess. The Elder chess team is a welcome addition to the various clubs and organizations during this 100th year at Elder high school. Hopefully the team will gain more numbers as the year goes on and in years to come.