Making every move count. How chess can help youths make good choices
About nine months ago Lenard Seawood started the Every Move Counts nonprofit startup to use the game of chess to help improve the lives of children in Stockton.
When he was in the Army, stationed in Germany in the early 1980s, a fellow soldier taught Seawood how to play chess so that they could pass away some idle time together. “This guy kept telling me ‘come on, let’s play chess,’” says Seawood. “I told him I didn’t know how to play and he said he’d teach me. I listened to him, I learned. I started going to the library and reading books and stuff and I started learning more and more. That’s really what caused chess to catch on with me.”
After about four years Seawood, an Arkansas native, was then sent stateside to be stationed at the Sharpe Army Depot in Lathrop. After another couple of years he retired from the military, settled in Stockton and got a job with the United States Postal Service where he worked for about 20 years until his retirement.
During the pandemic, Seawood saw that kids in general weren’t following through on a lot of things. They’d spend all their time playing on the computer or video games. He thought of the benefits that chess an bring to those who play it. “I figured that I can give them something better to do.”
“The first thing it teaches that every decision is important. You don’t want to be moving it right away. You have to think about it. What other choices can I make? What are the repercussions from making those choices? That should be very important in their mindset when making a move.”
“It’s very important for kids of color because so many kids are rushing and making decisions," he said. "They’re not thinking about the repercussions about what they’re doing until it’s too late. They think they’re young and they’ll live forever but a lot of them don’t live forever.”
While the main goal is to empower kids through chess, Seawood says that they’ll teach adults as well. “We’ll teach anybody. We’re trying to get ages 5 to 80.”
“We started out as a mobile chess club and had a giant chess set and we’d go to parks and people would show up and they’d pick up a piece and then somebody would play. They would ask ‘where are you guys located? Where can we come and play?’ I couldn’t answer that back then.”
Then Gwendolyn Daily with the Dome of Hope nonprofit suggested to Seawood that the pastor at the New Spirit Missionary Baptist Church (2410 S. Airport Way) in south Stockton would be amenable to letting the chess group use the church as a home base. Now they meet there every Friday (4 p.m.-7:30 p.m.) and continue with the mobile chess club at various places and times on Saturdays.
“As we get more involved we want to do more days of the week. We’re not trying to make them professionals at chess. We really are just looking for the kids to come play.” Seawood is hoping that kids can learn to think about the choices they make. “We’re trying to get them to the mindset where, just like in chess, when you move that piece, you should have thought about that piece before you moved it.”
Anyone interested in attending a session of Make Every Move Counts can contact Seawood at (209) 636-8922 or email him at llswood@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Record: Every Move Counts promotes chess to help teens and youth
