Students at Methow Valley Elementary School sharpened their chess skills.
Who needs “The Queen’s Gambit” when we have our very own chess champion in our midst?!
Winthrop resident Avery Young was a child chess prodigy, winning the Scholastic chess tournaments in her home state of Kansas for four years running, from fifth through eighth grades.
“When I was little we used to have a really cool chessboard, so I begged my dad to teach me how to play,” Avery says. “He used to play with my older brother and I was just captivated by how the pieces moved and how much concentration the players showed during the game.”
Avery’s dad finally relented when she was 6 and started showing her how the pieces moved. Avery loved the game as much as she loved the opportunity to connect with her father one-on-one, no small feat as the third of four children. “I grew up in a traditional family where the men go hunting and the women cook,” Avery says. “Chess was a way to bond with my dad.”
One day when she was about 8, Avery beat her dad fair and square. “I could tell he was surprised,” she says. “He had that ‘wait, what just happened?’ kind of look.” When that trend continued, Avery’s dad knew she needed a better opponent and connected her with a cousin who competed in chess tournaments. When Avery was 9, the cousin let her tag along to a tournament in downtown Kansas City, where she competed as the only kid.
Avery lost her first few games, but then something happened. “I realized I didn’t know why I was making certain moves, but it just felt intuitive,” she says. “I just felt like I needed to move my knight there, or my queen needed to retreat. I couldn’t explain it, but then when I looked around I’d see all these men watching us play, and they’d nod their heads when I made a move, and I knew it was the right thing to do. I wasn’t playing 10 moves ahead — I just felt like ‘this is what I need to be doing right now.’”
That strategy served Avery well, and with the help of a coach who nurtured her strength of intuition over tactics, she went on to win both Scholastic and professional chess tournaments.
Although Avery stepped back from serious chess competition when she was in high school — too many competing interests — she has remained an enthusiastic player, even starting a small chess club when she moved to the Methow Valley five years ago. (“Winters are long and dark here,” she says. “There’s only so much skiing you can do.”) That club has since been paused due to COVID, but in the meantime Avery has taken over the reins of the chess club that Janice Dickinson began at Methow Valley Elementary School.
“First through fifth grade is a great time to learn to play chess,” Avery says. “It’s the intersection of art, science, competition and strategy. You learn critical thinking, decision-making. It is so fun for me to help kids learn to trust their own intuition and instincts, from a life skills point of view.”
Avery says she doesn’t know exactly where the Methow Valley Elementary chess team is headed, but says her goal is “for everyone on the team to be able to beat me.” She remembers playing chess with other kids when she was growing up — some in person and some through correspondence chess, when she and a distant partner would snail mail each other one move at a time. “Now there are so many online resources, you can play people all over the world,” she says.
Avery acknowledges that to become a chess master you probably have to start playing as a kid. She remembers her coach saying to her, “Avery, you have no worries. You have a roof over your head and meals on the table. The only thing you have to do right now is study chess. If you want to get better you can; you have no other responsibilities.”
“I get that now that I’m a mom,” Avery says. “It takes a certain level of obsession and time to be the best at something. Once you’re an adult, and especially a parent, you can’t just relinquish your life.”
