By Phil Roberts, 2024
An episode on 60 Minutes, about the young people in Mississippi being taught to play chess, reminded me of the residence hall director at Northwest College in Powell, Mr. Ross Scott, who organized a round-robin chess tournament, open to everyone in the college (although all games were played in the lobby of Bridger Hall, the men’s dorm). As I recall, there must have been some 64 entrants in the first round–set up with brackets, etc, but best two-out-of-three games. I think the entire basketball team signed up for it, including John Johnson (later U of Iowa All-American and NBA star), and most of the rodeo team, too. First prize was a 100-year-old ivory chess set Mr. Scott had acquired sometime in his past. Silver dollars were the second prize (don’t remember how many). Third prize was an inlaid stone chessboard. Those who didn’t know the game had a couple of months in the fall to learn it; the tourney started right after Christmas break with the winner declared in May right before final exams. I was “in the money” for a while, beating the leader and handing him his only loss, but then losing ignominiously to my brother Steve and ending up in something like tenth place. I wonder how many of those Northwest grads continued to play the game? t happened back in the last century–probably obvious to most readers. If memory serves, it was the year Elvin Hayes and the Houston Cougars played the “game of the century” against Lew Alcindor and UCLA. (Was it in the regular season or in the NCAA tournament? I don’t remember). The chess games were postponed that night so that we could watch the game on TV in the lounge. Oddly, studying didn’t suffer because each entrant was limited to one match per day.