Brooklyn High School Chess Team Going to Nationals

Photos courtesy of Elliot Weiss

MIDWOOD, BROOKLYN — There's gotta be something in the cafeteria slop at Edward R. Murrow High School in Midwood, the public school whose chess team is headed to nationals for the 19th year in 35 years next month.

This, thanks to what their coach called an "unbelievable come from behind victory in the very last round" of the New York state championships in Saratoga over the weekend.

"It was amazing," the school's calculus teacher and chess coach, Elliot Weiss, told Patch by phone Monday.

He said the team's 15 players were "disappointed and pessimistic" going into the last round of the tournament Sunday afternoon. They were in third place, he said, and had given up on taking home the state trophy.

In the end, though, "the stars aligned."

Murrow players won every game they played in the tourney's last round, their coach said, while players from the two teams ahead of Murrow lost every one of their final games.

"We won by half a point" — the smallest margin by which a team can win, Weiss said. "I've never seen anything like this before."

In second place among the 100-plus schools in competition, he said, was the prestigious Brooklyn Technical High School in Fort Greene (better known as Brooklyn Tech).

"We're just a normal neighborhood school," Weiss said. "But we work hard."

Murrow's championship chess team will be meeting with NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the coming weeks, according to their coach.

"We've met every governor since Mario Cuomo," Weiss said. (The elder Cuomo's last term ended in 1994.)

And come early April, the main event: the 2016 National High School Championship in Atlanta, GA.

"Multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-nationalities, all came together to claim their 19th state title in 35 years of competitive chess," Weiss said via text message. "... Now it's on to the Nationals in Atlanta."