Illinois Chess Coaches Association Mission

Our mission is to empower Illinois chess coaches by providing resources, support, and access to competition in order to enrich the greater Illinois chess community.

Illinois Chess Coaches Association Core Values

Service

• We strive to be responsive, adaptive, and proactive in providing services to Illinois Chess Coaches.

Communication

• We will continually inform and be responsive to our members and coaches.

Outreach

• We work to extend the number and quality of scholastic chess programs in Illinois.

Accessibility

• Chess can and should be enjoyed by individuals regardless of social or economic status or physical or developmental capability.

Excellence

• We recognize the value of excellence both in chess as an activity and the services we provide to our coaches.

Education

• Chess is an educational tool aiding in the learning of planning, cause and effect relationships, pattern recognition, and research, all key skills for success in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics).

Integrity

• We respect and maintain good relationships with our coaches, players, partner organizations, and game of chess itself.

Love of the Game

• Chess is an historic and iconic game, and we celebrate its history, growth, and evolution in our activities and services.

Goals of the Illinois Chess Coaches Association

• Promote and provide a program of competition for individuals in a non-athletic atmosphere where physical power does not control the outcome of the contest and in which no handicap prevents any girl or boy from competition.

• Provide and promote tournaments and other instructional means for the improvement of chess play among students in the State of Illinois.

• Provide and promote competition in which individuals are allowed to recognize the importance of their thought processes, in which each competitor learns to accept the outcome of the contest as a measure of self-development in a thinking skill, and in which each competitor learns to accept the consequences of their own decisions.

• Provide competition in which the rules are based on the assumption that the competitors will behave in an honorable manner thereby fostering respect for people from a variety of sub-cultures within American society and that calls upon each competitor to behave in a socially acceptable manner.

• Cooperate with schools, community centers, recreation departments, and other groups and institutions in teaching chess, conducting tournaments, and other activities as shall promote the game and assist young people in their pursuit of learning and improving in its skill.

• Provide scholarship funds to juniors in recognition of their participating in chess in Illinois.

• Provide grants and gratuities to juniors to enable them to participate in chess activities.

• Disseminate information through publications and representatives.

• Help to reduce juvenile delinquency by providing alternative activities of a socially acceptable type.

• Recognize the talent displayed in the mastery of the game through awards and titles.

• Develop chess as art, recreation, and a scientific game that improves thinking skills and social behavior.

• Receive contributions and use them in the manner intended in section 501(c)(3) and exempt from taxation under section 501(e) of the Internal Revenue Code.

Illinois Chess Coaches Association By-Laws