More than a game, the Detroit City Chess Club has produced winners in life for 20 years
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Before Jordan Sweet obtained the skills to put the “finishing touches” on “shining” engines for Detroit Diesel, as he proudly does today; and before Sweet could even drive, the native Detroiter was already living his best life.
But he hadn't quite realized it yet.
“You don’t know you’re living in the golden age until those days are gone,” the 25-year-old Sweet said while reflecting back on his days as a youth chess player with the Detroit City Chess Club. “People don’t understand the dynamics of what goes on behind the scenes for a group of inner-city kids to be able to play chess all over the state and country. We had to do fundraisers and some of the adults had to take out loans. But our coaches and our parents made it happen for us and it was a great thing.”
Sweet, who won an individual state chess championship when he was 12, will have an opportunity to relive some of his greatest days on Aug. 10 when the Detroit City Chess Club (DCCC) celebrates its 20th anniversary during an awards program at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Sweet was selected as a member of the club’s 20th Anniversary Team, which represents the best-of-the-best players during DCCC’s 20-year history. In addition, DCCC’s 2023 All-City Team, composed of top scholastic chess players in Detroit from elementary school through high school, also will be honored during the program.
For Sweet, being selected to DCCC's 20th Anniversary Team provides further proof that he made the right decision to give chess a try after being kicked off the basketball team at Washington-Parks Academy following an argument with the basketball coach.
“Even before I was kicked off the basketball team, I noticed that everyone else at our school was playing chess,” said Sweet, noting that his chess experience taught him how to control his emotions. “I already had a relationship with Mr. (Kevin) Fite (founder of the Detroit City Chess Club) because he was my math teacher. But the person I reached out to was my best friend, Michael Brown, who was on the chess team. I had never played chess. I had always been a checkers guy. But I told my friend I was going to come with him to chess practice and I caught on fast.
“The funny thing about it was that before I joined the team, I was with my mother at the DIA and we saw members of the chess club playing, and I never thought that would be me because basketball was my life at the time. But once I was on the inside, I saw how cool it was. Twelve and 13 are critical ages, when you start to feel yourself, and you can go either way depending on the decisions you make. And the Chess Club changed my life and all of our lives for the better.”
Like Sweet, Serenity Harper was selected to DCCC’s 20th Anniversary Team. And also like Sweet, Harper said she was welcomed with open arms when, at the age of 7, she wandered into a classroom after school at Washington-Parks Academy where Fite was teaching chess to older students. Harper says she was immediately intrigued by the game and quickly learned that chess teaches lessons that go beyond the action on the board.
“Chess is literally the game of life,” proclaims the now-23-year-old Harper, who for about a year incessantly, but politely, asked her mother (Sherry Harper) if she could join the chess club. Harper and her younger brother, Joshua, did eventually join the team toward the end of Harper’s third-grade year, shortly after some of her friends triumphantly returned to school after a national chess tournament.
Harper said she plans to make the trek to Detroit for the Aug. 10 program from the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, where her work includes serving as a TV broadcast coordinator for The Victory Channel, which is connected to Kenneth Copeland Ministries.
“I still use what I learned through chess to this day — it’s part of my job,” said Harper, who graduated from Oral Roberts University in 2021 and aspires to be a full-time TV producer. “In chess, you learn strategy, so when we’re going to interview people on air, I’m researching the person first and determining how everything is going to fit. Chess also taught me how to speak to people and to always have a smile on my face, which are skills I use every day to make connections.”
A 2021 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in mechanical engineering, Marcus Badgett succinctly explained Thursday that he hopes his hard work in the classroom will ultimately connect him to a “quality” lifestyle, which will enable him to “travel the world and pick up new languages.” And when he reaches that point, this member of the DCCC 20th Anniversary Team says he will be able to point to his chess experiences.
“To get better at chess, you often have to work on stuff on your own and be proactive,” the 23-year-old Badgett, who began playing chess at Spain Elementary-Middle School, said. “Chess has definitely helped me with school and taught me how to think about things critically and strategically.”
Badgett, who is in the robotics master’s degree program at the University of Michigan, said that it also would be “cool” to one day share his technical expertise with Detroit youths who share his passion for chess and engineering.
The important role that giving back has played in DCCC’s history is something that Myles de Jongh understands as well as anyone. de Jongh, who will be honored on Aug. 10 as a member of the DCCC 2023 All-City Dream Team, was supported strongly in chess and life by his late father, attorney Stanley Leo de Jongh (May 22, 1961-Sept. 20, 2022), who contributed his time, talents and treasure to DCCC from the time Myles began playing chess as a student at Chrysler Elementary.
“My father volunteered at every single tournament I played in. He took me to all of my practices and he traveled with me every time we went out of town for a tournament,” said Myles, who has followed his father’s example by creating his own nonprofit, The Right Knight, LLC in March 2022, which has allowed him to teach chess to elementary school students, including students at Chrysler Elementary. “I think the Detroit City Chess Club was so important to him because he saw how much I love chess and he saw my growth.”
Myles, a 2023 graduate of the University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy who is headed to Purdue University, shared his thoughts on Thursday while taking a brief break — with his supervisor’s approval — from his Ford Motor Co. summer internship, where he has been working with the IT Department and software engineers. Myles explained that he was introduced to chess by a “special visitor” who came to Chrysler Elementary when he was in the second grade and told the students that “chess was like life,” which “amazed” the future chess team captain at the time.
That special visitor was “Mr. Fite,” the same Kevin Fite who so warmly welcomed Harper and Sweet to chess at Washington-Parks Academy. And it's the same Fite who has extended himself in some way to every person who will be honored on Aug. 10, including 30-year-old entrepreneur Kayeen Kemp, who found it was possible to excel in football, basketball and chess as a student at Duffield Middle School with Fite’s flexible guidance; 23-year-old Shellbi Stanfield, who was introduced to chess by Fite as an eighth grader at Woodward Academy and will travel to the awards program from Columbia, South Carolina, where the Michigan State graduate is a procurement sourcing leader for Schneider Electric, and 25-year-old Taylor Cogshell, a University of Detroit Mercy Dental School student, who on Wednesday wanted to talk about a letter of recommendation and an essay that Fite helped her with, which led to her admission into the Henry Ford Early College. It’s unlikely that any of those stories will be told by Fite at the DIA on Aug. 10. The people who know him best say Fite always finds a way to slip into the background as much as possible during DCCC ceremonies. But when pressed for a comment on Thursday, Fite used the occasion to give thanks to others that have contributed to DCCC’s 20-year success.
“When I say it’s not about me, that’s real,” said Fite, who revealed that he began thinking about a club that would bring young chess players from across Detroit together while he was teaching the game to a group of enthusiastic students at Duffield Elementary-Middle School. “I first need to thank my mother (Barbara), brother (Kenneth) and sister (Shawn), who have been with me from the beginning; and people like Huel Perkins, who helped me complete my education at Southern University, which made teaching and coaching in the schools possible. And then there have been so many other people and organizations that have supported the club and the kids once we got things rolling. And if not for the DIA as a partner, supporter and host on all of those Fridays that we have gathered there, I don’t know if we would be having this 20th anniversary celebration.
“But from the beginning, it’s really been all about the young people. Some of our honorees on Aug. 10 have already achieved rock star status at different times, like Charisse Woods, who represented the United States at the World Youth Championships as an eighth and ninth grader, and then Charisse impressed grandmaster Maurice Ashley when he visited Detroit last summer; and now we have Sidnei Austin from our club, who was first runner-up in the 2023 Miss Michigan USA competition. The truth is that they are all stars — the close to 200 people who will be honored Aug. 10 — along with everyone who has been connected to our club for the past 20 years. We want everyone to share in this celebration.”
Scott Talley is a native Detroiter, a proud product of Detroit Public Schools and lifelong lover of Detroit culture in all of its diverse forms. In his second tour with the Free Press, which he grew up reading as a child, he is excited and humbled to cover the city’s neighborhoods and the many interesting people who define its various communities. Contact him at: stalley@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @STalleyfreep. Read more of Scott's stories at www.freep.com/mosaic/detroit-is/.
Celebrating 20 years of life-changing moves
What: Detroit City Chess Club 20th Anniversary Awards Program
When: 5 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 10.
Where: The Film Theater at the Detroit Institute of Arts, 5200 Woodward Ave., in Detroit's Cultural Center Historic District. The theater is located at the John R Road entrance of the museum.
Program: The Detroit City Chess Club will honor a 20th Anniversary Team, representing the best-of-the-best players during DCCC’s 20-year history, along with the DCCC’s 2023 All-City Team, composed of top scholastic chess players in Detroit from elementary through high school. The awards program is free and open to the public. For more information about the Detroit City Chess Club, visit https://detroitchess.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit City Chess Club members shine brightly in the game of life
