Chess Masters at UT-Brownsville

By then, Harwood had built two national champion-caliber programs at Morningside and Dr. Americo Paredes elementary schools and knew some things would have to change at the university if it wanted to take the next step and legitimately compete as one of the elite chess teams in the country. The Brownsville players were good, but they wouldn't be enough. Harwood knew he needed to bring in some help and look outside the city's borders and far beyond the Rio Grande.
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Like so many stars, Axel Bachmann seems to shy away from the spotlight. He speaks in quick bursts, rarely looks directly at you and hides behind the shaggy, unkempt hair that flops down over his forehead. He blushes and dismisses it as nonsense when asked about his popularity with the girls on campus. About the only things that immediately draw attention to him are the twinkle of his diamond earring, the flash of his charismatic smile and his renowned brilliance at chess.

Born in Paraguay, the 18-year-old sensation is UTB's only Grand Master, a title reserved for fewer than 1,000 chess experts on the planet. Bachmann started playing with his father, a hydraulic engineer, when he was four and began entering tournaments at ten. Unlike many chess masters who receive heavy doses of coaching, Bachmann learned the game mostly online, where he would spend five or six hours a day playing and often beating top opponents from all over the world.

A little more than a year ago, UTB chess player Daniel Fernandez, who grew up in Boca Raton, Florida, told Harwood about Bachmann. Fernandez was familiar with the boy from Paraguay from when they played in some of the same South American tournaments together. Soon, Bachmann and Harwood were e-mailing each other and Harwood offered up a full scholarship — worth $12,000 a year — to play and study at UTB.

But it was not an easy decision for Bachmann. He had a girlfriend at the time, and had already set his mind on going to college in Argentina, a far easier commute back home than from Texas.

"I thought it would be hard and it won't be good," Bachmann says in his broken English that is increasingly becoming more fluid. "It was my parents who told me to give it a chance. They said that if I didn't like it, I could come home, but go check it out. So I did."

Bachmann has since adjusted nicely, embracing the freedom that all 18-year-olds away from home for the first time relish, and is now the top player on a UTB chess team that boasts a high-octane roster of international players. Of the 12 team members, seven come from Mexico or South American countries while all but one of the remaining players hail from Brownsville. With the exception of Fernandez, who is an International Master, only the foreign students have the impressive and difficult-to-earn chess titles.

"Now it is true that the Brownsville kids have been doing very well and winning national championships," says Harwood, "but most of the success has been at the lower age groups and in the elementary schools. But as the kids got older, they would plateau out. And for a top-notch college team, there's a big difference between where these kids are rated and where the top college teams' players are rated. And even with great coaching and doing nothing but training chess all day every day, it would be almost impossible to make up the gap with just local players. So, it was obvious to me that if we wanted a shot at the Final Four, we needed outside players."

One of the first keys to successful recruiting, as anyone in college sports will attest, is having a good coach. So, in September 2006 Harwood hired Gilberto Hernandez. Most people may never have heard of him, but if you play chess, particularly in a Spanish-speaking country, odds are you have.

Hernandez, of Mexico, earned the title of Grand Master at 25 and has been his country's top player for all but one of the last 12 years. In Mexico, he is the Michael Jordan of chess. During that time, he made his living as a professional chess player, residing in Spain and Argentina. Hernandez happened to be in Chicago playing a tournament in 2006 when Harwood persuaded him to swing by the university on his return to Mexico.

Hernandez says one of the draws for him to coach at UTB was the fact that it was so near in geography and culture to his own country, meaning the shock of moving to America would be minimal. After all, most Brownsville residents are Hispanic or of Hispanic descent and a majority of the population speaks Spanish. This fact has also greatly helped bring in top international players from Spanish-­speaking countries.

"It makes it much easier for me to come here," says Nadya Ortiz, a Women's International Master from Colombia. "It makes it much more comfortable."