Fairborn Scholastic Chess Club founder Tony Mumford brought to village youth via free summer camps in 2022, and has since established after-school programs that continue to run weekly. He’s pictured mid-game at Mills Lawn Elementary School. (Submitted photo)
Local chess club makes moves
- Published: December 19, 2024
By El Mele
The Fairborn Scholastic Chess Club is celebrating its 10th year educating and providing a space for children in Greene County to develop their problem-solving, critical thinking, social skills and confidence.
Over the last few years, the club’s founder, Tony Mumford, has expanded its reach to village youth, and he now operates the Yellow Springs Chess Club, introducing a whole new generation to the love of the game.
Originally from Mobile, Alabama, Mumford has been playing chess for 25 years. He told the News in a recent interview that he learned how to play at the Norfolk Community Chess Club while he was an undergraduate student at Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia.
Following in the footsteps of his uncle, who taught chess in the public school system in Flint, Michigan, he taught chess in a juvenile detention center in Flint from 2005 to 2006. He joined the Dayton Chess Club in 2009 and started teaching again in 2011 at a juvenile detention center in Montgomery County in Ohio before the program was nixed.
“I thought chess was a unique way to help children, especially those with learning disabilities, behavioral disorders or who are struggling in the classroom,” Mumford said. “The game employs a lot of skills, including mathematic and reasoning skills, that can be translated into their academics and their lives.”
In 2014, Mumford approached multiple schools in the Fairborn area about starting a chess program, but none were interested. He lived down the street from Fairborn Primary at the time, and decided to give his pitch one last shot there. A week later, he taught his first class, packed with students.
Mumford was joined by 10-year instructor Loren Rodgers and 14-year instructor William Sedlar, both of whom have been playing chess for 30 years. In 2016, Charles Deibert, who has been playing chess for 50 years and teaching chess for 30, also signed on as an instructor. Peter Galupa, who has been involved with the program since 2016, was brought on as an instructor this year.
Mumford teaches the beginners, and after 6–9 months, they move on to work with Rodgers. If they’re interested in competition, they start working with Sedlar; the chess club began competing in tournaments in 2017, and recently had a student win first place in the Kings Island Open. Deibert comes from Columbus to conduct seminars and lectures and prepares competing students for difficult tournaments.
“Our program really operates as a deterrence against truancy and juvenile delinquency,” Mumford said. “I don’t allow them to fail math, and I don’t allow them to be bad citizens in class. It’s an alternative method of socializing for kids that teaches them how to solve problems strategically and tactically. It’s an antiviolence measure.”
Mumford said he heard about Yellow Springs when he met former local resident Omar Durrani — affectionately known as “Mister Omar” by his Yellow Springs Chess Academy students — during the Queen City Chess Classic tournament. Durrani moved to Florida after nearly a decade teaching chess in the village, resulting in a chess- club-sized gap that Mumford filled.
In 2022, Mumford began teaching around eight students in a free after-school program at the Yellow Springs Community Library. With the help of the library — and a grant for which the library applied through the Yellow Springs Community Foundation, or YSCF — Mumford launched the free summer chess camp at John Bryan Community Center in 2023, attracting 25 students.
Mumford also started an after-school chess program through the Mills Lawn Extracurricular Program in late 2022, and it has been at capacity ever since. A second grant from YSCF allowed him to continue the free summer chess camp in 2024.
The funding from YSCF helps supply equipment, clocks, boards, pieces, various levels of instruction, snacks for the after-school program, tournament registration for regularly competing students and transportation for chess camp and after-school program participants, if needed.
This week, Mumford announced via the YS Chess Club Facebook page that the library will again host after-school chess on Fridays, beginning Dec. 13, 4–5:30 p.m.
The after-school program is open to all grade levels, though Mumford said he finds the younger students to be more focused, having fewer social and extracurricular obligations compared to the older students. Many of the older students who participate are students who joined the club when they were younger.
Though some of the students are serious competitors, some come just to play and socialize. All players of all skill levels are welcome.
“People ask what Fairborn Scholastic Chess Club is, and I say, ‘It’s everything,’” Mumford said. “It’s a club. It’s competition. It’s an after-school program. It’s a wide variety of activities to get kids engaged and involved in the game.”
In addition to the after-school program, Mumford also runs a community chess club every Friday, 5–7 p.m., at the YSCF Building. These meetings are open to the general public of all ages.
This January, Mumford said, he’ll begin working with a club in Columbus to put together a tournament in Yellow Springs. Details are forthcoming, but the tournament will be open to the public — though the matches themselves will be closed to spectators in order to minimize distractions.
After a decade of running his area chess club, Mumford said he continues to love his work — and the skill and confidence it inspires in the students he meets with weekly.
“My favorite moment is when I take a kid who’s been told that they can’t do it and watch them realize that they can do it,” he said. “I’ve had kids who couldn’t count, who couldn’t read, and whose teachers have given up on them. Through chess, they learn to believe in themselves.”
For more information, find “Yellow Springs Chess Club” or “Fairborn Scholastic Chess Club” on Facebook, or email yellowspringschess@gmail.com.
*The author is a student at Antioch College and a freelance reporter for the News.
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