I was watching a show on HBO called 'Real Sports with Bryant Gumbell'. It is a show covering various social issues in the sports world in our society. On the episode I was watching, there was a feature on Chess in a small town called Brownsville in Texas. Synopsis of episode can be found in text here. Brownsville is a very small town bordering Mexico with a population of 175,000 of which 90% is Hispanic. I was drawn to the feature not because I was looking for an answer to the question of my current post, but becuase I have a small connection to that town.
I have been to the town of Brownsville, Texas way back in the tail end of year 2004. I stayed overnight in a small hotel and the next day crossed the border to Mexico to pay an 'immigrant's pilgrimage' to an American Consulate in Matamoros. I have to get my Visa and one of the oddities of an immigrant life in USA is that, an immigrant has to go out of USA to renew the immigration Visa on the Passport at any American Consulate. I was living in Texas and the closest consulate was in Matamoros. If you have to go to Matamoros, the closest town with an airport was in Brownsville, TX. After getting my Visa at the consulate, I visited my home country where I met a beautiful and smart girl who a year later became my spouse.
So given my small connection to Brownsville, I wanted to know what did a brain game like chess have to do with such a small border town. Brownsville like any town bordering Mexico is more likely to be known for issues with the border, security, minorities, drug traficking and violence. This is where the story gets interesting. The small city of Brownsville and the schools in this town have achieved great success in the game of Chess. The high school chess teams from this town have been the winners of US National chess championships and for many years consecutively. Most Recently in April 2009, at the collegiate level the team representing University of Texas, Brownsville(UTB) defeated Stanford University for third place in the President's Cup. In 2010 they stood second behind the perennial winners from University of Maryland at Baltimore County (UMBC).
The combination of minorities, border town in Texas and phonomenal success in chess over a long period of time intrigued me and I did some search into history of Chess in Brownsville. Here from the UTB website is what I found.
Chess in Brownsville
Chess in Brownsville started in the later 1980's and early 1990s. The Russell Elementary School chess team paved the way of future events to come when they won seven consecutive Texas state championships from 1993-1999. Inspired by this success, several kids at other high schools took interest in chess with the assistance and promotion from school administration and facutly. Another school in Brownsville, Morningside Elementary School which started Chess in the summer of 1997, went on to come second in a national tournament by 1999. They were just half a point behind the winning team Hunter College Campus Elementary School from New York City. Without having the required financial resources by itself, The Morningside Elementary School was able to attend the national championship with the support from the local people and businesses who raised funds required for the chess team to travel and participate in the national championship. Later on different schools at different levels in Brownsville have all won national chess championships; Paredes and Hudson elementary schools, Oliveira and Vela middle schools, and Hanna and Porter high schools, led by Paredes’ seven national championships.
All this began in 1990 by Jose Juan Guajardo, when the principal of Russell Elementary School assigned him to teach at-risk fourth grade students. He decided to engage the students in chess learning from the experiences of teaching his own son and the rest as we see today as they say is history. This short history however hides a lot of different facets, like the hardwork, hours of practice put in by the minority kids, the encouragement provided by their parents and community etc., all of which are required for success. To me this story provides a theme, a small beginning by a single individual followed a big initial success inspires more people to join in and thereby more success and the spiral continues. The small start by Jose J. Guarhardo was met by big success at the state level relatively quickly by 1993. The initial success is very important as it demonstrates to the other members of the community, that success can be achieved despite the odds. This success was supported by the families of kids. The community where the kids lived participated and took pride in the success of the kids. The community recognized the success and provided encouragement when needed by raising funds to send the kids to national events.
The Sucess Template
If one were to arrive at a theme based on the above story, it would go like this.
- Barrier Breaker
- Willing Takers/Followers
- Continuing Success
- Network for Practicing and Competing Opportunities
I think the first point 'Barrier Breaker' is the most important. To Quote one of my favorite author Malcolm Gladwell from an interview with ESPN .
One of the things that always interests me in sports is how extraordinarily sensitive athletic performance is to social expectations. My favorite example is the four-minute mile. For years, no one even comes close. Then Roger Bannister breaks the record in 1954, and suddenly, everyone can break four minutes. Did runners get "better" in 1954? Not really. They simply became aware that running four minutes was possible. Same thing with baseball players and the Dominican Republic. Dominicans are not "better" infielders than everyone else. But if you are a nine-year-old kid playing in San Pedro de Macoris, you know that it's possible to be a major leaguer, in a way that the same kid growing up in Maine does not. When symbolic barriers are broken -- the first man from the Dominican Republic to make the majors, the first person to break four minutes -- the context in which we think of achievement changes dramatically.
The complete interview of Malcolm Gladwell quoted above can be found here.
The success of Hispanic community in Chess from the Brownsville area is not an one off phenomena. Certain immigrant and minority communities in USA and elsewhere have shown that they can achieve success at rates that are of envy to the rest. Case in point is the success of Dominicans in Major League Baseball as was also mentioned in the quote from the author of Tipping Point above. Breaking the barrier by achieving a widely recognized success causes an explosion of followers who are motived to follow the lead. The remaining points mentioned in the theme are needed for the continued dominance of the group in a particular field, be it Hispanics from Brownsville in Chess, Dominicans in Baseball, Russian Jews in Violin, Kenyans(of Kalenjin tribe) in marathon, South Korean women in WPGA (In 2007, 45 out of 121 international players in the LPGA tour and 8 out of top10 to play in US Open are from Korea ) etc.
Exploring the Theme with Dominicans in Baseball
Let me explore the theme I highlighted above by examining the success of Dominicans in Baseball. The brief history of Baseball in Dominican Republic can be found here and here. Baseball teams started playing baseball in Dominican republic in the year 1894/95. Until about the year 1956 there was not a single player from Dominican Republican playing in MLB. In the year1956 the guy named Osvaldo 'Ozzie' Virgil made his debut in MLB with the New York Giants. This barrier breaking by Ozzie was followed within a short span by many other Domican Republic players like Juan Marichal, the Alou brothers, Manny Mota and others making it to the highly competitive MLB. By 1965 Juan Marichal won the Most Valuable Player award in that year's All Star game. He was the most dominant pitcher in the 1960's. This made the game highly popular in Dominican Republic. The baseball league within the country intensified after the barrier on entering the MLB was broken by Ozzie Virgil and the success achieved by Juan Marichal. Money and Scouts followed from USA to Dominican Republic in search of ever expanding talent in the small country. So far over 500 players from Dominican Republic played in MLB. Here is the list of them all. In 2009 81 out of 748 active players in MLB are from Dominican Republic. It is the most by any other foreign country.
Pitfalls: Failure, Size and Hope Factor
So far the theme fits well. However, it is only anecdotal and is a far fetch to make into a Theory. There are some more questions that need to be answered. How did the barrier breaker do it? Was it the hard work or single individual defying all odds? Was it just luck? Why do some communities lose it; like field hockey lost to Cricket in India? Are they just event driven like the winning of World Cup by Indian Cricket in 1983 that coincided with Indian Hockeys beginning of a sudden death.
I think the size of the community matters. The communities achieving success have all been small with very competitve circuits for the young lads to hone thier skills, compete at a high degree among themselves. If the community becomes too big (eg., cricket in big country like india after 1983) it is very difficult to sustain the initial success and stop special interests in picking the correct talent to next level. The popularity can sustain for decades after the barrier breaking success, but the continued success becomes difficult to execute. There is probably an optimum size mix for the field in question. If the community is too small it is difficult to find talent, if it is too big it falls on its own weight with special interests and other evils creeping in.
The field in which the community wants to succeed has to provide for the 'Hope Factor'. The success in the field has to be the ticket for their way out to a higher ground in society. The higher ground could be standard of living , status or anything that matters to the community. To quote a Russian violinist Vadim Gluzman* "At least for Russian Jews, that was the only way out of settlements. If you were accepted into the St. Petersburg Conservatory, that was your way into the big city. So the violin became a tool of hope, because it was convenient. They were the children of hope: Mischa Elman, Jascha Heifetz, David Oistrakh, Nathan Milstein. That was the way for them and their families to move and have the legal right to bigger cities."
In a future post, I will explore the success of Indians at the Spelling Bee with the theme I derived above.
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* Did Jews invent the violin?
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