Zara: Her Move Next Sending Teams to USATE
This February, Her Move Next is sending four teams to the US Amateur Team East (USATE) tournament. The tournament takes place annually over Presidents’ Day weekend in Parsippany, New Jersey.
BY ZARA SHAH
THE SPENCE SCHOOL
Her League COACH & Her News COLUMNIST
This February, Her Move Next is sending four teams to the US Amateur Team East (USATE) tournament. The tournament takes place annually over Presidents’ Day weekend in Parsippany, New Jersey. The tournament consists of six rounds across three days. All of this may sound like a standard tournament, but the tournament is unique in numerous ways. Tournament games can be as short as thirty minutes or as long as six hours. Players of all ages participate in the tournament and even grandmasters, like Garry Kasparov, attend. It is not only an individual tournament but also a team tournament. Each team will have around four players, and around three hundred teams participate each year. Even the prizes are unique, which adds another layer of excitement and fun to the tournament atmosphere. Awards are given for the best team name, best costume, and, of course, best high school, college, work, family team, among other team relationships.
Simone Morden and Indira Raparthi, members of Her Move Next, have both participated at USATE in the past and will be returning this February. Simone is a student at Stuyvesant High School and a coach for Her Coaches. Indira is also a coach for Her Coaches and is a student at The Spence School. Last year Simone and Indira competed at USATE on a team together with Rose Morden and Aliya Saldanha-Suri. Simone describes that “being with them, it was a fun experience, especially making new friends and reigniting old friendships.” She notes that “while being at the tournament, it was really easy to get along with each other.” Indira also competed in 2018 with her dad, friend, and friend’s dad. Indira adds that this encouraged her decision to play again this year “because it was an overall fun experience and taught me a lot about teamwork and how chess doesn’t always have to be an individual sport. It was and is the most fun tournament because even if you lose and your team wins you still do well.”
Simone, Indira, Rose, and Aliya will all be competing together again this year. Since last year’s tournament, Simone, Indira, Rose, and Aliya have started Her Coaches. Her Coaches offers online chess coaching and practice to members of Her League and the Her Move Next community. Through this program, they thought to create three additional teams representing Her Move Next. One team will consist of another set of four coaches from Her Coaches. The two other teams will be composed of Her Coaches’ members. Her Coaches even held a practice tournament back in December to finalize teams. In this practice tournament, the coaches observed how well the players worked around each other in order to determine which team would form the best team dynamic in a USATE environment. Indira says that members have also been preparing for the tournament by “going over openings, endgames, etc and doing some team activities to make the tournament experience stronger.”
Simone is excited to be able to see the growth of their students because, as she expresses, “some of these players came to the program with little to no knowledge of chess and have grown since.” She believes the tournament will foster team camaraderie. Additionally, she is excited to “see new friendships be created outside of Zoom” because the majority of the interactions of members of Her Move Next exist there. She is grateful for her fellow coaches and is proud of the progress her students have made.
Indira hopes their “performance and spirit will show the chess world that chess can be fun and exciting despite stereotypes and the way teams can work together in an interesting dynamic.”
US Chess - USATE 2019 winners best costume (Left to right: Ben, Estelle, Simone, and Rose)