Karen Heller: 'Mr. Shutt' guides Masterman's chess champions

The champions gathered in the basement, their haunt, huddled over vinyl chess mats, plastic pieces, and rickety clocks. On a spring day, the place was a sweaty, smelly, noisy, airless, sunless cell. Winter, too. In June? Worse.

And, yet, joy.

The Julia R. Masterman Middle School won the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade U.S. Chess Federation's quadrennial SuperNationals V at Nashville's Opryland last weekend - 5,335 students in attendance - after a substantial drought of 11 years. Masterman, with grades five through 12, has won 10 top titles since 1991. The school's closets are stuffed with oversize trophies, many the same height as younger players.

Masterman was coached to glory by Steve Shutt, 71, who spent four decades inspiring chess players, half at Masterman, before - and this is important - he retired last June.

"I just saw how good these kids were. I couldn't leave them," he said, above the din. "They're the best group of kids at this age I have ever coached."

So Mr. Shutt returned to the school twice a week for seven hours each day, coaching during lunch breaks and after-school gratis. He told me, "I could never take money from the school district."

Also serving as volunteer coach was International Master and Masterman alum Greg Shahade.

The team represents six nations plus Puerto Rico, the most culturally diverse in Mr. Shutt's coaching career. Shira Moolten, 13, is the lone girl, common among chess groups. "It's not a big deal," she said with a shrug. "The team is really nice."

Competition is exhausting. At SuperNationals, every student played seven games. Alex Wlezien, 14, placed second and endured five games that lasted the maximum four hours.

Perhaps the basement setting keeps the students humble. Alex isn't sure of his national ranking (30th as of February) and studies chess 10 hours a week, "but I'm on Facebook more." Only one point separated Masterman from Virginia's Rocky Run Middle School. After Nalin Khanna, 12, won his final game, an exuberant Shahade told him: "Oh my God, Nalin, you clinched it!" To which the bewildered sixth grader asked, "Really?"

Srisa Changolkar, 12, said "some people don't even know we exist." The team said students think they're "nerds" - at Masterman, where so many students are academically gifted - but the adults think they're "pretty cool."

Chess tends to be a young person's game. As students age, their activities increase. College scholarships are few, though top players, like Shahade, can make a living.

"Chess tends to attract individualists who might not work in a team setting, but this makes them a team," Mr. Shutt said, his waist weighted down with a three-part fanny pack (phone, camera, calendar and glasses). Players keep improving because of the quality of computer chess programs and a searchable database of five million top games. "The students learn that the harder we work at a goal, the more we associate the work with the success. Kids sometimes believe there's a lot of luck to winning." Chess teaches them otherwise.

And how was the team honored for its glory? The championship was announced over the P.A. system during a morning advisory, which even some of the players did not hear. After all, there were PSSA tests to take, and Masterman students excel at so many activities.

Frankly, I think the students deserve team jackets with zippy graphics; instead of a varsity letter, perhaps a patch with a bishop or knight. And let us praise the players by name: Alex, Shira, Srisa, Nalin, Angel Hernandez-Camen (known as Josh), Torin Kuehnle, and Alejandro Budejen-Jerez.

In June, Mr. Shutt's first full year of nonretirement retirement will end. Will he continue? "I'm not ruling out anything," he said. "But I won't quit on them."

Besides, his middle-school champions are only getting better and older to create a winning high school team. And the quartet of fifth-grade boys Mr. Shutt took to SuperNationals, Hayden Keller, Manas Narula, Zak Kingsley, and Yuva Gambhir, looks awfully strong.

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