Within a few years, Lawrence schools may be turning out some of the nation’s top chess players.

“Our goal is not just to be the best in Kansas,” coach Brad Johnson said. “Our goal is to be the best in the nation.”

It could happen.

In March, Southwest Junior High School’s chess team won the high school title at the Kansas State Invitational Chess Tournament. The team from Quail Run School won the elementary school title.

Alan Shi, a sixth-grader at Quail Run, won eight matches and was named the individual state champion.

“If we work hard and if we are eager to win, I think we can win the nationals,” Alan said last week.

Quail Run won state titles in 1996 and 1998-2004. The team finished third in 1997 and second in 2005. The school took co-national championship honors in 2001.

Southwest also won the state high school title in 2004, finishing second in 2005.

Eighth-graders from Southwest Junior High School won a state high school chess championship this year. Members include, from left, Thomas Clark, Keely Stenseng, Kellen Cross and Thomas Reams. Not pictured is Peter Lesslie.

“We’ve had a lot of success,” said Southwest principal Trish Bransky.

Diverse influences

Much of that success is due to Quail Run students, upon graduation, taking their interest and expertise to Southwest. And much of their success, in recent years anyway, is tied to Steve Robinson, a patent attorney with offices in Lawrence and Overland Park.

“I started out at Quail Run in 1999 on kind of an ad hoc basis,” Robinson said. “Harold Nelson was the coach, and I helped him.”

Nelson, who’s still a counselor at Quail Run, gave up his coaching duties in 2001.

“I’d started the program in 1989, my first year here,” Nelson said. “We won the state title in 1996. But for me, 12 years was enough. It was time for someone else to come in.”

Robinson was asked to take over.

“When I was in junior high – I grew up in Wichita – my parents gave me one of those cheap plastic chess sets, and I went to the library and checked out books on how to play,” said the 51-year-old Robinson. “I got to the point where I could beat the competition locally.”

But in high school, he said, his interest cooled, only to be rekindled in 1972.

“I was working on the copy desk at the Wichita Eagle when Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky were playing for the world championship in Reykjavik, Iceland,” Robinson said. “All the chess junkies in town came down to the newsroom because they wanted to find out about the moves as soon as they were made – this was before the Internet. So I accommodated them. They got me interested again.”

After law school, Robinson moved to San Jose, Calif., where he happened upon Richard Shorman, a master-level player and teacher.

“He’s a legend in the Bay Area,” Robinson said. “He’s an eccentric fellow. He drives a robin-egg blue Volkswagen, nobody knows where he lives, he doesn’t have a phone. The only way to contact him is to frequent one of his haunts. He has several libraries that he visits for an hour a week.”

Over the years, Shorman developed a unique approach to the game and was willing to teach anyone who wanted to learn.

“I became a devotee,” Robinson said.

When Robinson moved to Lawrence in 1998, he began sharing Shorman’s approach with students at Quail Run.

Robinson and Johnson met when Johnson’s son, Sean, then a fourth-grader at Quail Run, wanted to join the chess club.

“It was made pretty clear to me that for the program to be successful, there has to be a lot parental involvement,” Johnson said. “I’d played chess for fun, so I said OK. And then as I got into it, I realized there are no limits. It’s a sport where everything is within your grasp. It’s great for kids.”

Johnson now divides his time between Quail Run and Southwest. He arranged for Bob Holliman, a chess master from Kansas City, to spend 90 minutes a week at Southwest.

“Bob is the key,” Johnson said.

Parental support

Nationally, most schools with successful chess programs are private rather than public, Robinson said.

“They recruit players, and they pay master-level instructors to coach,” he said.

In Lawrence, the schools provide the clubs with a place to meet, a little supervision and trips to some tournaments.

“Parents are responsible for the coaching,” said Southwest’s Bransky.

“We have incredible support from parents,” Johnson said.

Quail Run and Southwest aren’t the only Lawrence schools with chess clubs. Others include Wakarusa Valley and Cordley, South Junior High, and Lawrence and Free State high schools.

School officials welcome chess as an after-school activity.

“With chess : kids can really gain confidence in their own abilities to problem-solve, to analyze and make decisions,” Bransky said. “If they lose, they get to figure out what went wrong, figure out how not to let it happen again. That’s a great lesson.”

For state champion Alan Shi, it has another benefit: “It helps your brain work harder,” he said.