Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Chess master James A. Black (in track suit) with the I.S. 318 team and their national trophy.
By ANNE BARNARD and DYLAN LOEB McCLAIN
Published: April 17, 2012
The classroom at Intermediate School 318 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was filled on Tuesday with the thumping and clattering of a half-dozen high-speed chess matches, played with a rambunctious energy more reminiscent of a hockey game than of Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue.
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Sixth-grade chess players at I.S. 318, whose answering machine announces, “Home of the national chess champions.”
The school’s conquering heroes — its chess players — were blowing off steam. On Sunday, in Minneapolis, they became the first middle school team to win the United States Chess Federation’s national high school championship. The team, mostly eighth graders, beat out top high schools like Stuyvesant in Manhattan and Thomas Jefferson in Alexandria, Va.
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