President's Corner

A new feature I would like to add to the website is the President’s corner. I will try to make it a weekly feature. My topics will vary, but the goal is to establish some dialogue between the members and the Association. Thus my first topic is appropriately enough titled “communication”. I have 3 loosely related stories to tell and then I will tie it together at the end.The first story I would like to impart is one I was reminded of on Saturday night of the second weekend of the Iowa Closed. When I turned 30, I joined an over-30 soccer team in Indiana. I figured it would be good exercise, but yet competitive games. Within 2 years, I was put in charge of the team. My job was to collect the money, go to semi-annual meeting, schedule the field and pay the refs. I didn’t appreciate that the job was more than that, which I will illustrate with this example. I had to get some information from “Player A” and I knew he was scrimmaging at a field. So I went there and was waiting for the scrimmage to end. I chatted with some of the other teammates who I got along with real well. Within ear shot was “Player B”, who was also on the team, but we had never really talked much. Player B complained that I had walked past him and ignored him. This upset him since I was in charge of the team and he was unsure if I really wanted him to play on the team. This experience made me realize that I had to talk to everyone, not just people I get along with. We became decent friends and he played on my team for several years.To rewind for a minute, this Spring I unfortunately had to decline my invitation to the Closed Championship because, due to work, I could not commit to playing both weekends. I was there when I could make it, as I had agreed to help Brent Aronsen prepare the first weekend and was Ryan Butros’ and Jason Juett’s chauffeur for the second weekend. So, while there, I chatted with the players and directors and the moms and anyone else who wanted to talk. Well, Saturday night, I was talking to Tim Crouse and we were looking at the crosstables for the class tournaments. Tom Hesse showed up and I jokingly asked him if he was there to see how the common folks were doing. He replied that he did feel important playing in the Iowa Closed. He then gestured towards me and indicated that I even spent time talking to him which he was surprised by.Finally, Pete Karagianis was playing in a Chicago Invitational at the same time as the Iowa Closed. While there, he became good friends with Ben Finegold. He relayed to me how well they got along. I mentioned to him that I was not surprised since I have seen Ben at several tournaments and he seemed to get along with others real well. I then mentioned that it is difficult to meet and get to know others that well at a tournament since usually you spend most of the time playing the game and then in-between rounds you need to get food and sleep.

So, you may now be asking yourselves, what does all this mean?

I realize as President of IASCA that it is important for me to provide a sounding board to the members. The unfortunate point is that when I play at chess tournaments, my time is not that free to have open discussions. Since I usually bring college students with me, someone is always hungry and/or we are playing most of the time. But this does not mean that I am not available. You can always send me an email to timmcentee@msn.com and I will reply as reasonably as I can. I would like to use the bulletin board which is part of this site. I have already started discussions with the board on what they think the top priority items are and what we should be working on. As we finalize these items, I will be exposing them to you to get your input and help in getting these items accomplished. My goal is to make IASCA a strong organization, one of which we can all be proud.