News

The North Alabama Team Scholastic (NATS) Chess Tournament will occur on Saturday February 13, 2016 at Rainbow Elementary.  There will be a mandatory player's meeting at 9 a.m., and the first round will start at 9:15 a.m.  Four-person teams will play four rounds Saturday with a game time of 40 minutes and a 5 second delay.  All members of a team must attend the same school.  Students can "play up" to help fill a four-person team, as long as all the students attend the same school.  Public, private, and home school teams are welcome to register.  Club teams are not eligible for this tournament.

Early Registration forms and additional information can found on the Madison City Chess League website here.  Chess coaches can either register and pay online by February 10th, or they can mail their paper entry forms and checks made payable to the Madison City Chess League by February 5th.  The team registration fee is $40.  After the deadline to register by mail or online, the team fee doubles to $80 per team.  Teams registering after February 10th will receive a first-round half-point bye.

Players must have memberships with the United States Chess Federation (USCF) and the Alabama Chess Federation (ACF) in order to compete. USCF and ACF memberships can be obtained online.  An annual ACF membership costs $10 and will be required anyway if a student wants to compete at the State Scholastic Chess Championship in March.  Your ACF membership also helps to support the Alabama Chess In Schools initiative.  You can read more about it here.  USCF memberships can be obtained at www.uschess.org. 

This is the second year the Madison City Chess League has organized this tournament to help North Alabama teams prepare for the State Chess Championship.  As with all tournaments conducted by MCCL, all students will be required to notate their moves as they play.  If you are unfamiliar with chess notation, please read these articles (part 1 and part 2) and watch this video.

New this year:  In addition to awards for the top teams in the K-3, K-6, K-9 and K-12 sections, MCCL will award Top Female Team trophies to the top female team in each section.  All members of the four-person team must be female in order to be eligible for the Top Female Team prize.

Food and Concessions:  Attendees are in for a treat for breakfast and lunch!  Gourmet Grits food truck will be serving cheese grits and sautéed conecuh sausage, green,red,yellow peppers and eggs for breakfast and offering shrimp and grits, sautéed vegetables over Grits or pot roast and grits, and Broccoli salad for lunch.  Breakfast plate - $4 and Lunch plate  -$5.  Rollin Lobstah food truck also plans to be there with lobster rolls, lobster tacos, lobster bisque, and so much more.  Rainbow PTA will be offering concessions too.

NATS is sponsored by State Representatives Mac McCutcheon and Mike Ball.

Students competing last year in the K-6 section of 2015 NATS