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UMBC Chess Team Regarded as No. 1 in Western Hemisphere.

Aired February 11, 2002 - 14:35   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Now to a school in Maryland, where the chess team is considered absolute heroes. Some members on the team -- call it "Revenge of the Nerds -- some of them actually do refer to it that way, but it does not do justice to the esteem of which these kids are held. Kathy Slobogin paid a visit there.

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KATHY SLOBOGIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They're the most feared team in the western hemisphere. The campus loves them. The student newspaper covers every game.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The best chess team in the world!

SLOBOGIN: We're talking about the chess team. That's right. The chess team.

DR. FREEMAN HRABOWSKI, PRESIDENT, UMBC: They are revered. You see a chess player, you bow.

SLOBOGIN: Dr. Freeman Hrabowski is president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, or UMBC. The school doesn't have a football team -- doesn't want one. Its chess team has placed first in the Pan Am championship, the world series of college chess, five out of the last six years, beating teams from Harvard and MIT.

(on camera): For a lot of people where university chess is big might give a sort of nerdy impression. Is that OK with you?

HRABOWSKI: It's great. I'm called the mega nerd.

SLOBOGIN: Hrabowski is delighted to have UMBC known as the college of chess heads.

HRABOWSKI: What we hope the chess team will do is to say to people: we ought to be most concerned about the life of the mind.

SLOBOGIN: It wasn't always this way. UMBC's chess success is the vision of Alan Sherman, an associate computer science professor, who brought the team from its near-bottom ranking 10 years ago to its present pinnacle. Sherman has perfected the little-known art of chess recruitment.

ALAN SHERMAN, UMBC CHESS RECRUITER: 800 verbal, I would say that's outstanding.

SLOBOGIN: Here he is after Irena Crush (ph), the No. 1 female chess player in America. She has applied to Harvard, Yale and Brown.

SHERMAN: Of course, it's unlikely that they would be offering the same sort of scholarship that UMBC could offer.

SLOBOGIN: One of Sherman's recruits is Batsitsik Saran (ph).

SHERMAN: We call her the Mongolian terror. She's the former woman's chess champion from Mongolia. She is an intense fighter.

SLOBOGIN (on camera): How does it feel to be vanquished by the Mongolian terror?

TOM HARTWIG, UMBC CHESS TEAM: It feels pretty normal. She is a very strong chess player.

SLOBOGIN (voice-over): Dave Brogan, team president, says UBMC is a rare haven for chess nerds.

DAVE BROGAN, UMBC CHESS TEAM: You can come here and you can be part of the in group being a chess player, like where we're well respected.

SLOBOGIN: With good reason. The cache of the chess team has helped attract better students. Average SAT scores have gone up 165 points in the last 10 years. Much of the credit, says President Freeman goes to the fame of the chess club. Kathy Slobogin, CNN, Catonsville, Maryland.

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