Making history: UTRGV Chess Team wins at super finals, women’s team makes debut

The UTRGV Men’s Chess Team won the 2021 Texas Collegiate Super Finals Oct. 23 and 24 in Lubbock.

UTRGV was eligible to send two teams to the super finals, according to an email sent to The Rider Oct. 25 by Bartek Macieja, UTRGV’s chess coach.

Team A placed first with 3.5 match points and 11 game points, resulting in UTRGV’s fourth first-place win and team B placed fifth with 1 match point and 6 game points.

Kamil Dragun, a financial planning graduate student and UTRGV Chess Team member, placed first.

“I started [playing chess] when I was, like, around 5 years old,” Dragun said. “So, I’ve played, like, for 20 years.”

He said he did not expect UTRGV to win first place this year.

“Last semester, we lost a lot of team members,” Dragun said. “Now, we have, like, half of the team is new, basically.”

He said chess is the reason he is at UTRGV with a scholarship.

“Everything was possible because of chess,” Dragun said. “In another case, it would have been very difficult for me to come to the United States and study at the university.”

Last Sunday, UTRGV’s Women’s Chess Team competed at the 2021 U.S. National Collegiate Women’s Team Cup. 

As of press time results were unavailable. 

In the United States, there have been collegiate chess competitions for roughly 70 years, but last Sunday the first official women’s collegiate event took place online and was endorsed by the U.S. Chess Federation, Macieja said.

“Last year, we had our first women’s [match], but there were no official tournaments yet,” he said. “But there was a match, like a friendly match. For instance, we played against Texas Tech University, but no official championship.”

A lack of women in chess has made it difficult to form teams up until now, Macieja said. 

“There is a huge domination of men over women,” he said. “It was very difficult, even for the most talented women to get scholarships to get on the team.”

Macieja said in order to provide women with chess scholarships and opportunities, he had to get in touch with coaches and program managers from other universities.

“I needed to … check with them whether they wanted to have additional competitions just for women,” he said. “Because if they didn’t, then what’s the point of us having a team [if we are unable] to compete against anybody?”

The chess coach said there was concern about how difficult it would be to find female players.

“Nobody was against it,” Macieja said. “Just not everybody was enthusiastic that [it] would be possible to do in practice. We said ‘Well, let’s give it a try, let’s start.’”

He said the hope is that the team continues to develop and grow.

“We don’t expect that much of a participation the first year,” Macieja said. “You know, 70 years ago, even the general competitions were not big, but later, it grew.”

At the moment, the UTRGV Women’s Chess Team has four students on its roster, including Maria Malicka, an international computer science freshman from Poland who earned her Woman Candidate Master title in 2017 and FIDE Master title in 2020.

“I’ve been playing chess since I was 8 years old, I think,” Malicka said. “My grandfather showed me this game. He just wanted to play with me. And I liked it, and I wanted to play more. It was just completely random, really. It wasn’t on purpose.”

She said at first she learned the rules to play the game with her grandfather, but soon she started to compete.

“I started to play more professional, like in tournaments,” Malicka said. 

She said before she came to the United States, she traveled through Europe to compete and visited at least 10 different countries. 

“It’s a lot,” Malicka said. “But for a chess player, I didn’t travel so much, mainly because of [COVID-19]. It took [away] a lot of chances to travel.”

She said that chess has provided her with many opportunities.

“I like everything about this game,” Malicka said. “It’s not just random. Winning depends only on you, not on if you’re lucky or something. You have to calculate all of it. It’s a logical game. I like such activities, and because of this, I have a great opportunity to be here and study in the U.S.. So, basically, chess gave me a lot.”

Macieja said that chess allows people to travel and provides “amazing and unique opportunities.”

“Because of chess, many people can combine education and their hobby, their passion,” he said. “That’s what we offer at UTRGV. And I really encourage all women that like to play chess to contact the chess program.” To contact the UTRGV Chess Team, email chess@utrgv.edu.