Sunset’s P.S. 503 chess team raising funds to travel to national championship
Over the past five years, P.S. 503 has run a successful chess program, with the team, called the Sunset Knights, traveling the country to compete. This May, the 24 teammates from first through fifth grade are once again headed to the USCF National Scholastic Chess Championship in Nashville to play against the country’s best players, and the team and its supporters are hard at work raising money to enable the students to make the journey.
To that end, they have set up a page for donations through generosity by indiegogo, with the goal of raising $3,000.
“A colleague of mine at the school and I started [the chess team] as a lunch club,” said the school’s art teacher and chess coach Carlos Graupera. “We are connected with a non-profit organization called Chess in the Schools. They set up and work with low-income schools like ours to create a national level chess-playing team,” he said.