Texas Border Business
By Victoria Brito Morales
RIO GRANDE VALLEY, Texas – The UTRGV Chess Team recently hosted the first 2021 Collegiate Women’s Team Cup, drawing women from universities across the country for an online tournament endorsed by the U.S. Chess Federation.
The event had a total of 18 women competing and was designed to boost and support female participation in collegiate chess through competition.
“There is a huge over-representation of males in chess, and that is everywhere,” said Bartek Macieja, coach of the three-time national champion and six-time state champion chess team. “Events like this one are how we make a big difference.”
Macieja created the women’s team last year in an effort to diversify and recruit more skilled chess players.
The UTRGV Women’s Team is made up of four UTRGV freshman players, all of whom competed in the virtual event, which was distributed through lichess.org.
The UTRGV Women’s Team is made up of:
- Maria Malicka (FIDE Master), a freshman computer science major from Warsaw, Poland.
- Maili-Jade Quellet (Woman Grandmaster), a freshman management major from Quebec, Canada.
- Ana Shamatava (Woman FIDE Master), a freshman graphic design major from Tbilisi, Georgia.
- Lauren Tovias, a freshman nursing major from Harlingen.
Shamatava, who placed fifth overall during the tournament, first came to Brownsville with her husband, Irakli Beradze, an international master, who joined the UTRGV Chess Team in 2019.
She was recruited last year as the first woman on the team.
Even though she misses the excitement of in-person tournaments, she said, the competition was still fierce and challenging. Competitions last year were halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This tournament was the first-ever of its kind in the United States,” Shamatava said. “The competition was surprisingly strong. I was not expecting it.”
Other universities that had women competing in the tournament were University Missouri-Mizzou; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Texas Tech University; and Northern Illinois University.
