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<\/p>\nPORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. \u2014 A new juniors chess club has launched in Port St. Lucie, inspired by a young boy who wanted to share his love of the game with his community.<\/p>\n
Orion Jean Baptiste, a 9-year-old from Port St. Lucie, is the driving force behind the club.<\/p>\n
WATCH WPTV’S COVERAGE BELOW:<\/p>\n
Port St. Lucie 9-year-old launches junior chess club to share his love of the game<\/p>\n
“I just wanted kids to learn about chess,” Baptiste said.<\/p>\n
Baptiste’s love of the game began at age 5, playing alongside family. Now he hopes to pass that passion on to others.<\/p>\n
“Everybody’s more focused on like tech stuff,” Baptiste said. “I’m hoping that more people have respect for board games.”<\/p>\n
Diana Cowan Kempton, the club’s program director, said she hopes chess will help develop the next generation.<\/p>\n
“[It] will help to build leaders or members that are more focused, more patient, more strategic and thoughtful in their decision [making],” Kempton said.<\/p>\n
The club is attracting players of all skill levels. Thomas Furlong, a father who brought his children to the club, said the setting is ideal for his family.<\/p>\n
“This is like the perfect chance for her to learn chess, my son to get better at chess and then them to have a little sibling rivalry competition,” Furlong said.<\/p>\n
More than 36 juniors have already joined at the Port St. Lucie Community Center. The Atlantis Chess Club now meets there every Friday. The club will soon begin 2 more programs at the Fenn Center in Fort Pierce.<\/p>\n
For Francesca Furlong, one of the club’s newest members, the best part is simple.<\/p>\n
“[I like] playing with other kids,” Francesca said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
WPTV<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. \u2014 A new juniors chess club has launched in Port St. Lucie, inspired by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[125820,125821,125825,125822,171,125824,125823,173,172,125826],"class_list":["post-299163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-atlantis-chess-club","tag-fenn-center-fort-pierce","tag-junior-chess-club","tag-orion-jean-baptiste","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-chess-club","tag-port-st-lucie-community-center","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news","tag-youth-chess-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}