South Oak Cliff High School is known for excellence on the football field, but there’s another activity where students excel…chess.

“We’re on the football team, we’re also on the basketball team,” SOC football player Criston Ivy said as he played chess. “We’re trying everything!”

“These are the people that are playing,” Chess Club Coach Tyne Thompson said. “It’s not just the nerd with a book. Chess is a very inclusive sport, because it is a sport.”

Athletes, actors, and artists all sat across from each other with chessboards between them; all of them ‘speaking’ this universal language.

“Like I don’t even know the language that well, but I even understand what they was doing,” Gabriel Vecchionacce, one of the club’s best players, said. “It was like a form of communication for me that wa

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