22nd September 2009

MY GOALS FOR UK SCRABBLE

When WESPA was formed, we held a meeting whereby we all discussed our special interest. I declared that I wanted to encourage more players into competitive Scrabble, and felt the greatest untapped source of players was youth - Hence the formation of the WESPA youth committee, and the search for young players worldwide. At that stage, there were two countries where Scrabble is part of the School curriculum - Thailand and Malaysia, and these obviously had more and better young players than elsewhere. However, Singapore also had a small group of outstanding young players, not associated with a school group. I consulted Cheah Sui Hean (president of Singapore Scrabble) about his success in training these boys, and he proffered some advice, which I have used in my approach to the Youth challenge. Firstly, he said that they needed to play against adults in competition, if they were ever going to play well. Secondly, he said they needed to have peers who were also playing, to keep them involved because of the need for socialising, and also to compete against each other to improve their ratings. Thirdly, he warned me they like to set up target adults to beat in competition, and he was IT in Singapore. (All the young ones I have trained over the last 5 years cannot wait to beat me in a tournament, and some have achieved that already!)

We established the World Youth Scrabble Championship to put Youth Scrabble on the map, trying to make it as credible as Chess as a pastime for gifted young people. It is also a means of establishing a network of young players worldwide, who maintain contact via ISC, thus satisfying Cheah’s criteria for having peers. Cheah was originally skeptical about having a segregated tournament, given that we had already established that they need adult competition to improve their game. However, what happens in practice, is that most countries choose their team exclusively from the pool of young players who are competing against adults (ie, from their national ratings, not School Scrabble). Since the first WYSC06, which was dominated by the three Asian countries mentioned, more and more countries have been establishing programs to attract young players into their tournament scene. Some countries, such as NZ, still do not have a single young player. Others, like UK, have a few, but have been left behind by countries such as Qatar. Qatar had no young players, but in 2009 are fielding seven in the WYSC (it is less than a year since they started a recruitment campaign!). They have training sessions, weekly league events, and some longer tournaments for these new young players to prepare them for WYSC.

My goal is to help UK catch up with the rest of the world, by attracting more young players into the tournament circuit, where all ABSP players will then effectively become their coaches - just think, every time you beat them, they are learning something (and, sometimes it will be the reverse, they will win - so please don’t be too upset if you are beaten by a seven-year old). In order to do this, we need people going into schools and organising clubs. We need local clubs to reach out to the community. Perhaps ask your library if you could run an introductory session for children, or maybe do a letterbox drop during school holidays, inviting young people along to your club sessions. MAKE SURE THEY BRING A PARENT, for a number of reasons - apart from duty of care issues, you could become a babysitting service for same selfish adults. Once you have observed that a child has potential - can compute scores accurately, is using premium squares for high-scoring letters, has understood the concept of parallel play etc - then they are ready for more intense coaching to develop them for normal tournaments against adults. Over the next two years, I hope to provide such coaching. However, anyone can do this. I will eventually add to the resources on my youth scrabble website, with a POWERPOINT program which I use myself. There are already two very basic tutorials there for your use (courtesy of Graham Wakefield) – these may help when you first contact children, eg in a school group.

Expect to see the following happening in future:

Karen Richards
Youth Scrabble Officer