Chess instructor Jim Van Vorhis plays a game of chess with Montessori student Jessie Poiry, 11. (Photo: Enoch Wu/Sentinel-Tribune)

When Jim Van Vorhis stops to consider why he coaches young chess players, the picture
he conjures is of a young girl sitting at a chess board – too short for her feet
to even touch the ground – and beating a high school player.
"I get a charge out of that," said Van Vorhis about breaking such chess
stereotypes that it’s a game for older players, or for boys only.
Van Vorhis, of Bowling Green, is coach supervisor for, and co-founder of, the Great
Lakes Chess Association.
"Everything started with the Montessori (School) here in town" after he
enrolled his son, Nick about eight years ago. "Then I think St. Al’s was
our first school we went out and recruited."
As interest at the Montessori school grew, the impetus for parents in forming the
GLCA was frustration at having to drive to Michigan or Indiana to find
opponents. At the heart of that problem, he added, is that so many people think
chess is for older students. He said he even was told once that "kids this
young don’t play chess."
Van Vorhis and his team of coaches and students have proved the naysayers wrong.
In 2011, GLCA, with its 12 member schools and 160 players, had the first grade and
third grade champions in Ohio as well as the primary champions and middle school
champions.
He "is a really good coach, he helps me a lot," said Henry Jacob, a
sixth-grade chess player at St. Rose Catholic School in Perrysburg. "We’re
all lucky to have a coach like him. His teaching skills are incredible."

Van Vorhis coaches about 140 youngsters; there are three other coaches within the
association.
Four days each week, he spends an hour before school starts with players at Bowling
Green’s Crim, Conneaut and Kenwood elementaries plus Bowling Green Christian
Academy; after-school lessons are given at Montessori School of Bowling Green,
Perrysburg’s St. Rose, the Bowling Green Middle School, and both the elementary
and junior high in Ottawa Hills.
On a regular basis on Fridays in Toledo, he also helps oversee matches with more than
100 kids.
Van Vorhis was taught the game at age 26 by his father-in-law, a Austrian military
veteran. His first coaching job was in 1989 in Toledo.
"I’m pretty good with the primary grades plus kids up to fourth or fifth
grade," Van Vorhis explained. Anyone with a rating over 900 requires more
expert coaching, he added.
Ratings estimate the strength of the player, based on past performances; a 900 rating
is considered a novice.
Van Vorhis said he is a 1,100 to 1,200 level player. That gives him the knowledge to
help beginning players learn terminology, basic moves and fundamental tactics.

The coach "is really nice and helps if you’re stuck somewhere and tells you what
you should’ve done," added sixth-grader Joey Veltri, also at St. Rose.
"I can take the kids up through third grade, and I think we can hang with anyone
around," Van Vorhis explained. But when they start to study lots of
openings (the first few moves of a chess game that set the tone and strategy),
he looks for more professional help.
The association is in need of more coaches, he admitted. But knowledge of chess is
secondary to a coach’s rapport with the students. "That makes the best
chess coach: Their first love is children or being a teacher and working with
kids."
Jessica Hover, associate director at the Montessori School, sees those traits in Van
Vorhis.
"I think Jim is amazing. He has a really unique ability to understand the kids,
then make it really fun for them to learn how to play chess," she shared.

He is "unbelievably dedicated" to the students. Her own son, a first-grader
at the school, is so taken with the game he asked for a chess set for Christmas.

Theresa Veltri, whose son Joey has been playing for seven years, is in awe of Van
Vorhis’ coaching. "He’s just wonderful with the kids. He’s just got a very
gentle way … a very calming way."
Van Vorhis isn’t just teaching chess – he also is helping the youngsters learn a
number of life lessons.
"There really are, at lots of levels, so many lessons that chess can teach young
people," Van Vorhis said. "One of the fundamental rules of chess is
called the touch rule: If you touch a piece you have to move it." That
helps teach a child to think before they act. And, once they let go of the
piece, there’s no taking back the move. "It teaches them actions have
consequences."
The young players also are expected to speak up if, at a match or tournament, they
note their opponent not following the rules.
"I wish I had, when I was that age, that kind of nerve and ability to argue
rationally," the coach said.
What started as a reluctant effort in Toledo has, at age 53, engulfed Van Vorhis’
life.
"This has turned into a full-time gig for me."
But in the summer, Van Vorhis packs up the chess boards and travels west to offer
tours of national parks such as Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. His Wind River
Adventure Tours offers educational tours for families, plus youth and school
groups.
He has, he admitted with a chuckle, "two of the oddest jobs in Bowling Green if
you think about it."
But he returns to his home in Ohio each fall to resume his hectic coaching schedule.

"I believe in what I do, and the benefits chess provides kids," he stated.