Don't Mess with Texas Chess Girls

This summer is a big one for US Chess Women and Girls, and you can find a wide range of events in our recently added Women's and Girls' Event Calendar. The season features the US Women's Open and the US Junior Girls Championship (now underway.) Meanwhile, US Women's Championship runner-up Annie Wang is playing in the US Junior Championship mixed division. A couple weeks after the Juniors, US Chess hosts the National Girls Tournament of Champions in Madison. In Texas, WFM Priya Trakru is involved in a number of events to promote chess to girls. Priya, a HERLead scholar, is based in Brownsville, Texas. She is partnering with the City of Brownsville to host free Girls Chess Clinics, with her most recent session featured in the Brownsville Herald. 

If you can get girls into that male-dominated field (of chess), it’s really empowering and you get more confidence.

Priya also led a class at the 2nd Annual Queens of the Rio Grande Valley camp, hosted this week in Mercedes, Texas. Organizer Russell Harwood told US Chess, "It is an honor to hold our camp at their wonderful facilities of the South Texas Independent School District's Science Academy in the top-rated school district in Texas." The first edition of camp was featured in the April edition of Chess Life Magazine in a piece by Harwood called, "All About the Girls." WIM Luciana Morales, also of Brownsville, was a guest instructor on the final day of the camp.