Zara: A Typical Her League Tournament
Her League tournaments follow a unique structure. Let’s go through a typical tournament program while hearing from coaches, players, and parents along the way.
BY ZARA SHAH
THE SPENCE SCHOOL
Her League COACH & Her News COLUMNIST
A Typical Her League Tournament
Since its launch event in December 2018, Her Move Next has shifted to monthly virtual Her League events introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic. HMN has amassed nearly 300 members spanning 22 states and 6 countries. Her League events are all-girls chess tournaments that foster community and a love for learning while maintaining an element of competition.
Her League tournaments follow a unique structure. Let’s go through a typical tournament program while hearing from coaches, players, and parents along the way.
A huge aspect of Her League tournaments is its online structure. Parent Chunhua Weng, mother of Her League player Abigail, spoke highly of this format. Chunhua said, “this online format provided by Her Move Next is extremely helpful. We have this platform where we can meet other girls online, and it has just made a huge difference. We feel connected to the girl chess community…This online format saves on commuting and transportation safety concerns. I just think it saves a lot of trouble…This platform meets all our needs.” Chunhua shared that she hasn’t yet felt comfortable having her young daughter attend drop-off chess camps with older and bigger boys.
Each Her League event begins with time for community bonding where players get to meet the tournament coaches and engage in interactive chess puzzles. This time is important for players to meet each other as a large group while challenging themselves with puzzles. It is a great time to learn from others, to ask questions, to practice, and to share one's own insight.
Next, the event continues into hearing from a guest speaker. At each Her League event, a different speaker joins to share about their experiences and accomplishments. Speakers greatly vary in their occupation, age, and interests as they range from actors to those working in healthcare. Suhana, who has coached with Her League for around two years, enjoys hearing from Her League’s variety of guest speakers. She is “always amazed” by the speakers and by hearing about their experiences and accomplishments in their respective fields. She thinks it’s important that the speakers come from different fields as it allows players to gain exposure to areas outside of chess, while having the rest of the tournament to focus on chess. Even though speakers come from different backgrounds, many have experienced the effects of a gender gap in their fields, which is a theme that exists in the chess community as well. Hearing guest speakers face and fight the gender gap in their own ways is inspirational to the girls facing similar issues within chess.
After hearing from the guest speaker and getting players’ live questions answered, the tournament play begins. Players move into four smaller breakout rooms to meet their team members and coaches. Active Her League player Dena Wang highlighted the different teams as a key aspect of the tournaments. Throughout the three rounds of rated game play, players remain in their team rooms. Upon completing each round, players can review and analyze their game with their coach as an opportunity to share their exciting wins, to ask questions about particular moves, and to receive any advice. The team rooms are a fun and supportive way to grow as a chess competitor.
For Mahika, who has coached with Her Move Next for the past year, coaching and doing game analysis “is fun. A lot of the time kids will want to go over the games that they won so it’s really great to see how they were thinking and how they ended up winning the game and their excitement when they’re showing you the game and the tactic or whatever that game winning move was.” Additionally, Mahika thinks “it’s really cool that [game review] is in the moment right after their game because sometimes when you go through it yourself it’s a day or two later so you can’t remember everything that you were thinking but when you’re going through it with a coach, you’re able to remember exactly what you were thinking in that moment and go over and explain your logic. I think it’s really helpful just to have that and especially to prepare you for the next round.”
Suhana described Her League’s all-girl’s community as “comfortable, encouraging, and supportive.” She feels an all-girls community allows for greater comfort and desire to practice, learn, and ask questions. Mahika appreciates the all-girls community and wishes she “had coaches that were also girls older than me that I could look up to and see that they were playing and a lot of time because I didn’t have that community; chess wasn’t as fun for me as I think it could have been if I had joined this community when I was younger.” As a coach, Mahika thinks “it’s important to be that role model for other younger girls for them to keep continuing chess.” George, Dena’s father, loves how “there’s a lot of camaraderie among all the women in Her League” and from the guest speakers to the coaches being female, he believes it lets his daughter and other young players know that “even though [chess] is male dominated, it doesn’t have to be.”
Each Her League event concludes with everyone once again gathering as a large group to celebrate the players and the great chess games that coaches watched. Prizes are awarded to individual winners of each quad and to each member of the team with the most points. Further, individual points are accumulated at the end of each Her League season, and then again at the end of each year, for additional prizes. Seasons consist of three tournaments and are divided into the winter, spring, summer, and fall seasons. This structure for awarding prizes speaks to the continued community and participation that is being built among all players throughout the entire year.