Maryland college team closes in on chess crown

From Correspondent Kathleen Koch

BALTIMORE, Maryland (CNN) -- The Pan American Chess Championships were under way this weekend in Baltimore, pitting the best college-age and younger chess players in the world against one another over the checked board.

The favored team hails not from an elite chess power like Harvard or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but from closer to home -- the University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus.

And the reason is the recruiting job done by mild-mannered Professor Alan Sherman, who in six years has created what is now the top-rated chess team in the country.

Using scholarships and ingenuity, he picked up players like William "The Exterminator" Morrison and Valery Atlas and his twin brother, Dmitri.

"Recruiting is very competitive," Sherman says. "It was very difficult to attract some of these players."

Sherman started by signing on the former coach of Russia's Olympic reserve team in Minsk -- one of the best, but, says Sherman, "each of the members of our first team is much better than our coach."

Still, coach Igor Epshteyn has pulled the team of strong individuals together.

"They are playing like a team," he says. "They support each other. ... This is very important, the spirit of a team."

Team members say offering full scholarships like other athletes get is a strong draw.

"Most definitely, you offer people scholarships," says Derrick Longo, president of the school's chess club.

"Chess is a sport," says team member Oxana Tarassova. "It's as good as basketball, as swimming."

Howard Prince, chairman of the United States Chess Federation's college committee, says that schools of higher learning are now recognizing that chess carries a certain prestige in a competitive sense as well as an intellectual one.

The Pan American championships includes individual competitions for all ages -- college-level, and grades 1 through 12.

The top pre-college team wins four scholarships to the UMBC. It's part of Sherman's strategy to guarantee the university the cream of the crop of the next generation of chess masters.

But it's his team of all-stars that Sherman is hoping to see walk away Monday with top honors -- for the first time ever.

Related story:

• Man beats machine in chess match ... whew!! - February 19, 1996

Related site:

• 1996 Pan-American Chess Championships

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