CLEVELAND — Outside the doors of John Marshall High School, a group of high schoolers on the chess team got ready this morning to take their moves to Memphis, Tennessee, for the 2022 National High School Chess Championship this weekend.
School staff, family and friends and even the high school’s drum line woke up early to send them off.
The John Marshall High School chess team is no stranger to competing at a high level.
“We’ve been to nationals in 2019. We’re going again,” said Nouh Shaikh, a junior at John Marshall.
The team of ten students will compete in Memphis against students from the nation.
“The students right before the pandemic were actually set up to go on a trip to nationals and it got canceled and so these students are the ones that went in eighth grade, were able to compete at the high school level and now they get to go again,” said Sara Kidner, the school’s principal.
Readers of local news may remember members of this chess team from a 2019 feature in Cleveland Scene, which followed the students in middle school and called them "a team we should all be rooting for."
Some of the students on the team are traveling out of state for the first time.
“We have students at all different levels,” she said.
The team’s peers made sure there was a proper sendoff.
“It’s very motivational. It’s actually very helpful…really appreciate it as well,” said Shaikh.
Download the News 5 Cleveland app now for more stories from us, plus alerts on major news, the latest weather forecast, traffic information and much more. Download now on your Apple device here, and your Android device here.
You can also catch News 5 Cleveland on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, YouTube TV, DIRECTV NOW, Hulu Live and more. We're also on Amazon Alexa devices. Learn more about our streaming options here.
