A Powerhouse Chess School

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MIKE PESCA, host:

Look at the list of America's best colleges and you won't find the University of Texas at Dallas, but look at the list of the best college sports programs and you still won't find the University of Texas at Dallas. But - this is the real but…

MARTIN: Okay.

PESCA: If you look at the list of the best Chess teams in the world, I'm not going to fool you again because you will find the University of Texas at Dallas right at the top. Go Comets. UTD's team is one of the best in the country. How do they do it? Like any other any college competition, you've got to recruit.

We talked with James Stallings, director and head recruiter for the University of Texas at Dallas Chess Team.

Mr. JAMES STALLINGS (Director, Chess Program, University of Texas at Dallas): Hello. How are you?

PESCA: We're doing pretty good here.

When you - if you were running a big-time college football program and you were recruiting the best high school kids, you get them all into the stadium, you'd shut the light, and then you dramatically turn on the lights and the kid would see his name on the JumboTron. The announcer would announce the recruits' name and it would reverberate to - throughout the stadium. What do you do? Show them the shiny, new chessboards?

Mr. STALLINGS: Well, I don't know. I - chess seems to be a little bit more reserved than that.

MARTIN: Yeah.

Mr. STALLINGS: You know, we actually go about a little bit differently here. These - these players have been playing chess for a long time, so they know the chess many pretty well. Actually, what I do is I stress our academic programs because I think that's our best chance of recruiting these people. Because, really, I'm going up against other universities who may not have good chess programs, but they have good academic programs, so that's what I try to do - is focus on our academic programs.

PESCA: So I'm a kid, I really like what you're selling me, but I'm, like, I got to tell you, I have an offer from Yale and they have a chess team. And it -Yale's Yale, why should I go to UTD?

Mr. STALLINGS: And that's - probably in one of my primary functions is to tell people about UT Dallas and what we have to offer. And, basically, we have excellent students, we have excellent faculty, and excellent programs. But people don't know what these programs are, so I like to start off by telling them a little bit about our, say, our executive MBA program and the Financial Times, for instance, rated it tops in the State of Texas and tied with Georgetown for 35th worldwide, so that's a pretty high ranking. We have all sorts of programs that people have never even heard of, so that's what I focus on. Because they're going to spend four years here - a lot of time and effort to get a degree, and that's - I want them to know that that degree from UT Dallas has value.

PESCA: Do you also sell them on the fact that at a school like Yale or Harvard, they'll be a small pawn on a big board, but there at UTD, their chess prowess will be appreciated, they'll be campus celebrities and so forth?

Mr. STALLINGS: Well, it's not so much that they'll be appreciated, it's - they have a community of friends when they get here. In other words, they'll know a lot of these people, so even if they're coming from states far away, other countries, they'll automatically be with a group of people who understand them. So it's not so much - although it's certainly true that the faculty and the student body and the staff - everybody here really does appreciate the team; that's certainly true. But they'll also have this sort of built-in group of friends.

PESCA: And what kind of package - basically, if you get a kid in your sights who's going to be a great chess player, does he get the full ride automatically?

Mr. STALLINGS: Interesting enough, our mantra here at UT Dallas is chess comes second; academics come first. And one of the things that people don't know, because they never see it, is that a lot of - not a lot, but now and then, some good chess players are not accepted here because you do have to have top grades. Because the fact of the matter is, of all the public schools in the State of Texas, UT Dallas has the highest SAT scores average for the incoming freshman.

PESCA: I heard you offered a scholarship to a 10-year-old, what were the circumstances around that?

Mr. STALLINGS: Well, what happens is, in addition to scholarships for incoming freshman, we have some competitive scholarships in tournaments, and - so, like, in certain tournaments, either locally - here in Dallas - or in the State of Texas or nationally, we give that scholarship to whoever wins, and part of the idea behind that is that we're recognizing that excellence, which something - intellectual excellence that we pride ourselves on at the UT Dallas, and it also sort of establishes that idea in the mind of the youngster very early on that they have something to look forward to.

MARTIN: Mr. Stallings, can I ask you how this all got started in the first place? I mean, did UTD just attract - happened to attract a couple of really good chess players and then they decided, hey, we've got something here? Let's market this.

Mr. STALLINGS: That's a…

MARTIN: …And then why Texas?

Mr. STALLINGS: Yeah, that's a great question. It was sort of almost serendipitous in that a couple of students came - just 11 years old - they came to Professor Tim Redman, and they said, we want to start a chess club. And it just so happened - this is the serendipitous part - Professor Redman had been president of the U.S. Chess Federation.

MARTIN: Well, there you go.

Mr. STALLINGS: So he knew quite a bit about chess, and he started thinking about this, and he went to the president of the university, and this would be the beginning of tremendous support form the University of Texas at Dallas -the whole administration, the president, the provost, the dean to whom I report, the dean of Undergraduate Education - they began to realize that this would be a way to get UT Dallas' name out there. Because that's - the biggest problem we have is being a new university.

MARTIN: Yeah.

Mr. STALLINGS: Nobody knows about us.

PESCA: You know, in that way - you must hear this a lot - but you remind me a little of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia. Explain it to the listeners why I say this.

Mr. STALLINGS: Well, that's a - I - like most analogies, things break down at a certain point.

PESCA: But this is a country - this is a small republic of Russia. They wanted to put itself on the map and their president is - was the president of the International Chess Federation, and he built a chess palace, and they went chess crazy, and they used chess to put them on the map.

Mr. STALLINGS: Well, I think one difference, to me, is that he is pretty much the supreme ruler and…

PESCA: Ah, that's true. Yeah.

Mr. STALLINGS: He does seem to have unlimited funds.

PESCA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mr. STALLINGS: And we don't quite fit into that category.

(Soundbite of laughter)

MARTIN: I'm going to sneak in one more question.

Mr. STALLINGS: Yeah.

MARTIN: Mr. Stallings, can you confirm reports - we have heard that you've actually purchased home and away jerseys for your teams?

(Soundbite of laughter)

MARTIN: Is this true?

Mr. STALLINGS: That is correct.

MARTIN: Really?

Mr. STALLINGS: We now have home and away jerseys. And we've put - used them for the first time in our match against the University of Belgrade about a week ago.

MARTIN: Uh-huh.

Mr. STALLINGS: And I think that the jerseys…

MARTIN: What did Belgrade say? I mean, what was their response? They're like, what are we doing? I thought we were playing chess.

(Soundbite of laughter)

MARTIN: Are we playing rugby?

Mr. STALLINGS: Well, it's even more than that. Before the match began, we had the U.T. Dallas cheerleaders there and…

MARTIN: That is too much.

Mr. STALLINGS: …we played this great match - you know that match against University of Belgrade, a very good team - and we won decisively 11-to-5.

MARTIN: And you think that maybe the cheerleaders and the jerseys have something to do with that?

Mr. STALLINGS: Absolutely.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. STALLINGS: Last year, we didn't have either one, and we lost the match seven and half to eight and a half. So I think you can…

MARTIN: Psychological edge.

Mr. STALLINGS: …(unintelligible) next year.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. STALLINGS: And, of course, their players could see our cheerleaders, too.

MARTIN: Mm-hmm.

PESCA: Distraction.

MARTIN: Mm-hmm. A double-edged sword there.

PESCA: I could just imagine the cheers. Go, win, fight, fight. Queens, rook threatens knights.

Mr. STALLINGS: It was - yeah, that was (unintelligible)

MARTIN: That was good, Mike.

(Soundbite of laughter)

MARTIN: He's been working on that a long time, Mr. Stallings…

PESCA: Yeah.

MARTIN: …so we could give him props for that.

PESCA: Now I'm going to knit my own pom-poms.

(Soundbite of laughter)

PESCA: Well, anyway, thanks so much. James Stallings, director and head recruiter for the University of Texas' Dallas Chess Team. Thank you very much.

Mr. STALLINGS: Thank you.

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