Girl power?
It’s the last round of the IHSA state chess tournament, and I see my teammates gathering around a table in the distance. I head over with my notation book and pen in hand and sit down at Board 5. The guy across the table curses and mutters, “Why do I always get the girls?”
I smirk and he explains that he just played a girl. “Who won?” I ask.
“I did,” he says in a “duh-isn’t-it-obvious” tone. “She sucked.”
I frown. The guy was nice, but he had just unconsciously struck a nerve. Too many times, walking through hallways during tournament, I’ve heard, “Did you see that game I played against that girl? She sucked. Dropped a queen!” It’s not necessarily sexism, but it piques at my pride all the same. Yeah, we’re girls. That doesn’t mean we can’t own.
Thus, I proceeded to beat the guy in 13 moves. No hard feelings, dude.
People ask me sometimes, “What’s it like being one of the only girls in chess?”
I’m never quite sure how to answer. I’m not sure it even registers with me, most of the time. I don’t go out there thinking of myself as a minority — and yet at every tournament I go out of the way to find all the girls and meet them, and at every comment about girls during these tourneys my ears perk up, and I’m ready to take down any guy who might even dare imply girls can’t play chess.
It’s true that there aren’t many girls playing chess (at this last tournament of over 1,000 people, I saw a total of maybe 10 girls — and three of them were the girlfriends of guys we played), and it’s also true that most of the girls are on JV. A lot of girls drop out because it’s a “guy’s thing” or there aren’t any other girls on their teams.
But just look at the perks!
You get a room to yourself, for one. At state the guys had to go four guys to a room. (At least one of them ended up sleeping on the floor. Hah.) And me? I got a room to myself, meaning I didn’t have to get up early to fight with three other people for use of the bathroom.
It’s also nice because you have an extra edge over the guy you’re playing. They’re under intense pressure — imagine if they lost to a girl! Some guys also just can’t play against girls. I played this one guy during the season and beat him pretty easily, just to find out later that he was actually a lot better than me (he beat one of our higher boards later). His teammates told me he’d never won against a girl. (Hah!)
And then you can get medals for being the “top female,” which sounds really awesome. I mean, top female? Doesn’t sound bad at all! … There’s just the minor detail that there’s only five girls or so in the running for it anyway. Freshman year I got a nice trophy for being the girl with the most points in the league — it was almost as big as Shang’s (he won the first-place overall trophy). They got rid of the award the next year. :(
Next year, I’m going to organize an all-girls team and proceed to win state. Now THAT would be hot.
Annie Liang