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Toting five trophies, 14-year-old Dominic Fleming Penn of Grays Ferry, along with seven other members of the Paul Robeson Chess Club and their coach, Mikyeil El-Mekki, landed at Philadelphia International Airport April 7. On their way to baggage claim, strangers approached the team of Southwest-based Shaw Middle and West Philly-based Blankenburg Elementary and Middle school students and were compelled to offer congratulatory words.
"Seeing a bunch of young black guys, a lot of people were expecting it to be sports trophies," El-Mekki said. "Then, they could not hide their surprise and many of them were very expressive about how impressed they were. People were very generous with their compliments."
The praise was not only well-earned but well-deserved for the club that had checkmated its competitors to take home five honors at the 2008 National Junior High Chess Championship in Dallas, Texas, April 4 to 6.
"It was so exciting to win something at nationals. We didn’t think we could win anything. We knew we were good enough, but it was our first time competing in nationals and we felt it was beyond our level. But we tried our best and we were good enough to compete with any club, school and person in the country," Penn, from the 3100 block of Wharton Street, said.
The teen also competed in the 2008 Pennsylvania Scholastic Chess Championship in Carlisle March 8 to 9, where his club was crowned state champ. The 10 fourth- through eighth-graders represented Robeson as well as their respective schools.
At states, students were broken into kindergarten through sixth and seventh through 12th grade divisions. Penn was a member of the Blankenburg team that took fourth place in the schools division. In the seven to 12 category, the Robeson club was named the 2008 state champ, as it tallied the most wins.
A month later at nationals, Penn and seven of his chessmates competed in the K through eighth-grade category and clinched a 23rd-place team trophy.
The grueling three-day event with about 900 students from across the nation averaged about 12 hours a day with each round taking about four hours.
"It was breathtaking just to see all these competitors," Penn said of the Texas challenge.
When nerves got the better of him, Penn followed his coach’s advice: "I tried to stay as calm as possible. Our coach tells us to meditate before each match — don’t focus on your opponent’s face, focus on how winning makes you feel and concentrate on holding up the winning trophy."
That advice came in handy April 23 when Robeson competed in the 2008 Eagles Chess Tournament at Lincoln Financial Field. Sponsored by the Eagles Youth Partnership, After-School Activities Partnership and the Philadelphia Chess Challenge, the annual showdown is open to middle and high school students in the Philadelphia School District.
Penn won a third place trophy out of about 51 players this year.
Twice a week, the 15- to 18-member club practices for two hours at Shaw under the watchful, instructive eye of El-Mekki.
Impressed with Penn’s moves, El-Mekki feels the sky is the limit for the budding player. "He’s my top student currently. His [scholastic chess] rating has gone up 600 points in the past 12, 13 months — and that is just unbelievable. Some players, 100 points a year is a good increase. He’s been growing at an exponential rate," the coach said of his pupil of two years.
Like the late man after which their club is named — a black activist, chess player, athlete, singer and actor who lived the last decade of his life in West Philly — the students see themselves as role models, breaking race and socio-economic stereotypes in a game that is believed to have first appeared in India at about 600 A.D.
"We are doing something that most people in this area or community don’t do," Penn said of chess.
Mondays and Thursdays are practice days, and Blankenburg students either bus from their school to Shaw or get a ride. Penn said he sometimes stays at his aunt’s house near the school on practice nights or takes two buses to get home to South Philly. While the hectic commute may seem a likely deterrent, Penn is not phased. "It’s easy to get home or to my aunt’s," he said, adding the trek doesn’t bother him. "I love chess. The fact that most people our age don’t do anything like this — it’s opened up new doors."
After a Blankenburg faculty member asked Penn and some others if they wanted to learn a new skill, the man began teaching them chess during their lunchtime.
Penn joined Robeson when the club started about two years ago. While Penn’s father dabbles, the award-winning player has not had the opportunity to place his dad’s king in check; An only child, Penn sees his father regularly and lives with mother Lisa Fleming.
"My whole family, everybody I know is like, proud. They knew I played chess and they were proud of that, but to go to nationals and Carlisle [states], they were really proud of that," Penn said.
Since no other relatives or neighborhood friends play the game, Penn plays football with his South Philly buddies. But outside of Robeson, most of his peers view chess as corny or for "geeks," he said. However, Penn knows the game has taught him more than the difference between a rook and a pawn.
"I noticed that chess has a lot of things to do with life — it’s so close to life," Penn said.
Patience, responsibility, discipline, think before you act and "protecting your pieces like you protect yourself" are a few of the lessons the teen has learned.
Wanting to be a pediatrician when he grows up, Penn is hoping to land a chess scholarship to college, but, "I’ll delve into that later. I’ll worry about getting to high school first," the eighth-grader said with a laugh.
Contact Staff Writer Lorraine Gennaro at lgennaro@southphillyreview.com or ext. 124.
