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Is the same everywhere: strong girls quitting chess in MS-HS
Re: Is the same everywhere: strong girls quitting chess in MS-HS
When we add a new player to the database, the default setting is Male. No big surprise, eh.
So, when we do a search for female players, are they all on the list? Of course not!
The problem is that when organizers, especially for junior tournaments, send it tournaments with new players to add, they don't always identify gender. The office could guess, but.....so please identify gender when sending in tournaments with new players.
Full disclosure: as an organizer myself, I was guilty myself of missing information, so I tread lightly here.
Help me fix the problem. If you believe a female is missing from the list, please send a note to the office. I will check it out.
Similarly, if a junior is missing from the top junior lists, maybe we don't have a birthdate.
Last edited by Bob Gillanders; Friday, 5th September, 2014, 04:58 PM.
Re: Is the same everywhere: strong girls quitting chess in MS-HS
The "Quebec" problem is that the CFC's membership expiry dates don't match those of the FQE. So the CFC now thinks that most Quebec players have expiry dates of 2014-09-01, which means that (by default - since it is now after Sept. 1) they don't show up on any lists which are requested.
The other glitch is on the FQE site where is seems impossible to get a list of all women under 20. You can get one (all women) or the other (all juniors) - but not both. It's a problem when you can't tell at a glance which sex a player is. e.g is "Chang Yun" male or female? (there are many that are clearly female that have valid FQE memberships, and that should be reflected on the CFC side)
The other glitch is on the FQE site where is seems impossible to get a list of all women under 20. You can get one (all women) or the other (all juniors) - but not both. It's a problem when you can't tell at a glance which sex a player is. e.g is "Chang Yun" male or female? (there are many that are clearly female that have valid FQE memberships, and that should be reflected on the CFC side)
Actually, there are so few active adult female players. Remove Diane Mongeau, Julie Trottier and Chantal Nicole, and all remaining players over 1200 are less than 20 years old.
or the CFC could help itself by incorporating the necessary questions into it's online renewal process. Right now, unless it has been changed recently, the online renewal process doesn't even ask for the name of the person whose membership is being renewed. That would go some distance in solving your information problems.
Let us consider...what the effect has been on the demographic change since the USCF decided to become, shall we say, more 'child friendly'. Former adult players have found other pursuits. I would assume this would continue at an exponential rate. The graph shows there are less than five hundred members in the 20 year-old age group; 473 to be specific. That is an average of less than TEN PER STATE! Why is this so? By age twenty only 2% of the females are left in the numbers. TWO PERCENT! Could it be that a twenty year-old male, who is becoming a man, does not wish to continue playing a game with grammar school age children, especially preteen girls? Many comments can be found on the USCF forum concerning comments made by young male adults saying chess is considered a “children’s game.” These males have left childhood behind and are preparing to enter the adult world. Yet after five years on the board, three as President, Ruth Haring is “puzzled.” It is obvious the USCF is purposeless and heading in the wrong direction. It’s in their own numbers.
This is exactly the direction we see the CFC going... turning chess into a 'children's game'. One has to remember that in the minds of young people, perception is everything. If the vast majority of 20-year-old males THINK chess is a children's game, no amount of arguments opposing that view will have any effect.
Whether it's Ruth Haring (USCF) or Vlad Drkulec / Hal Bond (CFC), the lack of understanding is the same. Haring thinks she will somehow overcome all the obstacles and raise the female membership of the USCF to 70,000 -- a ridiculous notion!
In that report, Haring writes: So my goal is to double USCF membership. What about retention? Recall the earlier chart of of membership by age and the dropoff at 11-12 years old? A jigsaw puzzle we need to solve for sure. I believe that as a community we need to tell our stories better. Eventually, if we all participate and innovate, our story will go viral and significantly increase retention.
So what is clear here is that Haring has no idea how to go about achieving her goal, and she's challenging all the membership of the USCF to do the job! Her phrase "if we all participate and innovate" is about as vague and uninspiring as can be. It all boils down to "there's nothing we can figure out to do, you the members have to do it and we can't even tell you how."
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Re: Re : Re: Is the same everywhere: strong girls quitting chess in MS-HS
Very good points. I have heard comments from older men too (not including me, by the way) about not being comfortable playing against 7 year olds. It's not so much that they are embarrassed to lose to these youngsters, it's that they feel that they've lost a certain social aspect to the game. What are the solutions? Obviously we don't want to discourage scholastic/junior chess. We could segregate juniors and adults, but most of the ambitious kids WANT to test themselves against the adults. For older folks, there's the option of including chess in the various seniors' organizations, but that doesn't help the young adults.
Re: Is the same everywhere: strong girls quitting chess in MS-HS
The Montreal Open this weekend has a special "Seniors" section, along with the usual A, B, and C sections. It's open to anyone (over 50, I think), and ratings range from 1200 or so to about 2100. Something like 18 players registered in this section. 175 entries in the whole tournament.
Very good points. I have heard comments from older men too (not including me, by the way) about not being comfortable playing against 7 year olds.
That's not new. Around 1970 there were adults at the club who told me they didn't want to be paired against the young players. Back then there weren't very many juniors at the club.
Going back to when I played my junior chess, I used to hang around the chess club a lot. It was a 7 day a week club. After awhile I got to know which of the adults would play me and then I'd try to catch them when they didn't have a game going with anyone else. We played at a reasonable pace and would play several games in an evening. I made sure I didn't win them all so they would play with me again.
or the CFC could help itself by incorporating the necessary questions into it's online renewal process. Right now, unless it has been changed recently, the online renewal process doesn't even ask for the name of the person whose membership is being renewed. That would go some distance in solving your information problems.
Hi Roger,
Yes, you are quite correct in pointing out deficiencies in our online renewal process.
To say it is "not user friendly", is an understatement. It is just as frustrating to the office as it is with the membership.
Improvement of the online renewal process heads a short list of specific issues I want to tackle in the next few months. As always, there are those urgent matters that consume our time. :(
Last edited by Bob Gillanders; Sunday, 7th September, 2014, 10:09 AM.
For those not familiar with the name Mo'ne Davis, the opening sentence reference in this article, here's her Wikipedia entry. Perhaps chess needs its own Mo'ne Davis (:
Re: Re : Re: Is the same everywhere: strong girls quitting chess in MS-HS
With 2 of my three daughters enjoying chess, female chess playing role models (over 20) are very hard to find. Successful females they have met in the GTA are mostly their peers or in their teens.
My oldest did enjoy participating in the Ontario Girls Chess championship in Mississauga earlier this year ..... more all girl events might help.
Their current "chess" role models are Katie Perry (who did a chess photo shoot recently) and Carly Rae Jepson (who apparently likes to relax by solving chess puzzles)
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