Background
1976 was just a mere four years after Bobby Fischer’s historic victory over Boris Spassky and the Russian chess empire. The Fischer boom caused many American’s to start playing chess. In northern Illinois two class A High School teams North Boone and Harvard had a great rivalry going. They were both in the same conference and played each other a couple times a year. Guenther Wohlfarth was coach of North Boone and Loren Ingram was the coach at Harvard. Both teams qualified to play in the State Class A Team championship. The scoring for class A was board 1, 3 points, board 2 through 4 , 2 points and board 5, 1 point.
At the state tournament North Boone had tied a match with another high school so that when they were paired against Harvard, North Boone needed to win the match in order to win the state championship. Harvard’s board order was Glen Gratz on board 1, Lloyd Smith on board 2, Ken Witscher on board 3, Dave Schreck on board 4 and Mark Campbell on board 5. Ted Siwek was Harvard’s alternate. North Boone’s board order was Bruce Broom on board 1, Tony Hendrix on board 2, Don Ward on board 3, Bill Hahn on board 4 and Bonnie Ward on board 5. Harvard won on boards 1 and 4. North Boone won on boards 2, 3 and 5. The match scored ended in 5-5 tie and Harvard won the huge trophy and the state championship. Harvard went on to win the state championship the next year narrowly defeating Genoa-Kingston another local rival.
The rematch
North Boone has repeatedly claimed that if they had played their team in a different board order they would have won that match and the state championship. Don Ward former North Boone player and coach arranged a rematch with Glen Gratz, current North Boone coach and former board 1 player from Harvard. The conditions for the rematch were that any board order was allowed. It took some time to track down the former players and request they play. A match date of March 5th was set. Those players living out of state would play via the Internet. Due to scheduling problem, Ken Witscher from California and Dr. Bruce Groom from Arkansas played their first game on Saturday, March 1st. This was Dr. Groom’s first time ever playing chess on the Internet. After dropping a pawn he settled down and got an advantage in a rook and pawn endgame. The time control on the Internet was 60 minutes with a 30 second increment. In an effort to gain time on the clock Dr. Groom repeated check with his rook one too many times and the computer claimed a draw by repetition.'
The results
On March 5th, Glen Gratz played his traditional Sicilian defense and won against Bill Hahn on Board 1. Lloyd Smith, Harvard’s 3rd board player was not able to attend because he was recovering from a medical condition. The game was postponed. On board 4, Tony Hendrix grabbed a pawn utilizing a rook pin and pushed forward for a win for North Boone. Bonnie (Ward) Harms on board 5 blundered a piece with the touch move rule. Her blunder allowed her to have 2 pawns for the piece. In the endgame Mark Campbell could not see how to win the game and offered her a draw. Coach Guenther Wohlfarth attending encouraged Bonnie to take the draw. That left the score postponed with Harvard leading the match 4.5 to 3.5. Harvard’s coach Loren Ingram was pleased with the results.
Lloyd Smith after a two-month delay decided to pass on playing and Harvard inserted alternate Ted Siwek to play against Don Ward on board 3. Ted played the Dutch Stonewall. In the middle game Don Ward played a very clever rook and queen sacrifice to capture a pawn on f5. He following up with a knight fork on e7. This resulted in Don having a one-pawn lead. On Ted’s next move he had two ways of winning the pawn back with his rook. He chose the less rewarding alternative. However, for a number of moves Ted had the advantage and could have won Don’s knight with his king by double attacking the knight and rook at the same time. After missing that move, Don consolidated and had an outside passed h pawn. Ted had to move his king to the kingside to win the h pawn and Don was able to mop up Ted’s pawns on the queenside with his king and knight. With Don’s victory North Boone won the match 5.5 to 4.5.
Prolog
Harvard’s chess program was abandoned in the 1980’s. In 2003, Harvard entered a team in the North Boone tournament. The players from Harvard hope to have a team play in the state chess tournament next year. North Boone has won the state championship 3 times under Guenther Wohlfarth’s leadership. This rematch shows that North Boone could have had one more championship. The rivalry has produced two chess masters, Glen Gratz, North Boone’s chess coach, and Kevin Schmuggerow who played for North Boone in the late 70’s and early 80’s.
Links: IHSA Chess Team Champions