First posted last week here, 18-year-old chess champion—the highest-rated African American female chess player in history—Jessica Hyatt’s visit to the DIA in an organized simul against 27 opponents “outed” a whole bunch of Detroit dads and grandfathers who have introduced their daughters and granddaughters to the analytical game of chess.

[hellip;]there’s a group of Detroit dads that have been making moves for years; taking their kids to practices and tournaments all over; sitting in silence — sometimes for hours at a time — as their progeny test wits, strategy and skills against their opponents, and loving every minute of it. Unlike soccer or hockey, any congratulatory cheers are saved for the end of the game. But these fathers’ pride is on display all the time.

“When I introduced my daughter to chess, it was all about giving her critical-thinking skills, and she was like: ‘Oh, I love this game,’ " said Keith Walker, whose middle school daughter, Madison, is on the chess team at Bates Academy. “Now, I’ve been a part of the chess community in Detroit for about six years, and I can say that the fathers behind the chess scene are very strong. We give our kids security and safety, and we also look out for all of the kids that are playing. So all the kids are my kids and we become a unit.”

The smile on Michael Slater Jr.'s face as he took advantage of the minutes right before the start of the simul at the DIA to take some up-close pictures of his daughter Amara — a rising third-grader at Bates Academy — let everyone in the Great Hall know that Slater, too, definitely was having fun. […] “I support Amara in chess because she enjoys playing and I enjoy watching her,” Slater said[…] “But I am going to speak for all of the dads in Detroit’s chess community and say that we’re here and we’re involved in everything that we see our children do.”

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