About Us
We are, and always have been, a friendly group of chess enthusiasts sharing a love for the game.
Our club’s roots go back to the 1970s, when an informal group of players looking for a fun evening of chess began getting together on Wednesdays at the old Heritage Center of downtown Vero Beach. Two members from that earlier group, Ellen Gezork and Carl Ross, still play.
The club’s first official name was the Citrus Chess Club. Because many members found it difficult to drive at night, the meeting place was soon changed to the Vero Beach Senior Center. In the late 1980s, when the center could no longer accommodate us, we found new quarters for evening meetings in the Vero Beach Junior High School library. But membership fell until the club made arrangements to meet in the Indian River County Main Library in the early 1990s.
With the library system’s support and under the name Vero Beach Chess Club, the club began growing again. Under the leadership of former President Mitch Lobron, now deceased, club volunteers reached out to area schools to teach chess to students.
The Vero Beach Chess Club continued to add organized activities and, in 2006, merged with the old Sebastian Chess Club, which met at the North Indian River County Library in Sebastian and was designed mostly for beginners and children. To reflect our broader reach, we changed the name of the combined club to the Indian River County Chess Club in the fall of 2006.
Also in 2006:
* We became an affiliate of the United States Chess Federation and of the Florida Chess Association, and ran our first USCF-rated tournaments. (We also run unrated tournaments).
* We expanded our instructional program, which now encompasses visits to local schools.
* We adopted formal bylaws, held an election of officers and established a bank account for the club.
* We launched this Web site.
Despite the growth and more formal structure, our goal is and will always remain the same: To promote fun, friendship and learning through chess. We invite everyone who shares our love for the game to join us.