UNI HIGH UNDOUBTEDLY has a terrific faculty. Dedicated teachers and hard-working administrators and secretaries are constantly helping students succeed both in and out of school, and we thank them for that.

However, there is one staff member who may pass unnoticed as he walks through the halls every Monday during the fall and winter months.

He is Chris Merli, the Uni High chess coach, one of the chief reasons for the tremendous success of the chess team in recent years, capped off by last year’s Illinois High School Association state championship and a United States Chess Federation national title.

Making of a chess player

Merli goes head to head with the best player he's coached at Uni, 2009 graduate Gordon Ruan. Gargoyle photo by Alex Zhai (click to enlarge)

Like his players, Merli holds a passion for the game of kings that has been continually growing since childhood.

Born in St. Louis, Merli was first exposed to chess at the age of 6 by watching two of his neighbors play. Shortly after, he asked for a chess set for his seventh birthday and has been an avid player ever since.

“At first, my dad taught me how the pieces moved and bought me a book on basic strategy,” recalls Merli. “I soon was able to beat nearly everyone I played.”

For the young Merli, beating his friends and family was enough to keep him enthralled by the game. During the next few years, he would continue to play casually, and each victory would draw him deeper and deeper into the world of chess.

“Chess is a game of pure strategy,” Merli explains. “There is no luck and no bad bounces. In chess, it comes down to if you or your opponent plays better.”

Eventually, casual games would not suffice to feed Merli’s passion for chess. When he was in sixth grade, he played a game against his teacher’s husband, a tournament player whose U.S. Chess Federation rating Merli estimates to have been around 1400. (Players who enter USCF-sanctioned tournaments are assigned a rating level obtained from a mathematical algorithm that takes into account the opponents’ strength and the number of games played. The most competitive level of play occurs between players with ratings of more than 2000, while 1400 is considered the rating of an average tournament-goer.)

Merli won the game and quickly realized that he possessed the ability to play chess competitively. Soon he joined the local junior high chess team and earned the right to play on first board during his first year on the team. (Each player on a chess team is assigned a “board” to play on, with first board being the most competitive. When playing another team, each board plays his or her counterpart from the other team — i.e. first boards play other first boards, second boards play other second boards, etc.)

As far as the competition, Merli enjoyed every second of it.

“I love the beauty and grace of chess, but I have to admit that at some level, I like that moment in a game when your opponent realizes that you have won,” he says. “In chess, all that is important is who has played the best move, and that moment when your opponent knows you have outplayed them is my favorite.”

In chess, Merli had finally found something in which he could compete without worrying about his physical stature.

“I played sports when I was younger,” he says, “but I was always told I was not big enough for the team. No one ever said that when I sat in front of the board in a chess game.”

From player to coach

Merli discusses strategy with his players. Gargoyle photo by Gordon Ruan (click to enlarge)

Since his first exposure to formal chess play, Merli has been a regular competitor in various USCF-sponsored tournaments. At age 16, he began directing tournaments, a role that he attributes to the lack of people qualified to direct.

In 1995, five years after moving to the Champaign-Urbana area, Merli began to teach chess after a player from Urbana High School asked him for help to improve his game. Since then, Merli has taken up a number of young and talented chess players, including Gordon Ruan (Class of ’09) and freshman George Ruan.

But chess by itself is not enough for Merli to make a career. Biology has always been something that has captured his attention just as much as chess has. One of Merli’s fondest childhood memories is using his microscope to examine various specimens that he found.

Currently, Merli is a professor of biology and chemistry at Richland Community College in Decatur. As a busy college professor, he must work hard to balance his time between teaching science and teaching chess. Which makes his time at Uni all the more valuable to the players.

In 2000, Audrey Wells, then head of Uni's English department and the school's chess sponsor (a position French teacher John Garvey now holds), contacted Merli and asked him to coach the team. Merli agreed to become Uni High’s volunteer chess coach.

In the first half of the 2000-01 season, the team had a 1-11 record, but in the second half, they secured 11 wins and 1 loss. Merli’s impressive coaching in the second half of the season earned him an official job offer as the Uni High chess coach, a position he continues to hold to this day.

From the onset, Merli has always been impressed by the caliber of Uni chess players.

“From the first year, I learned that the players at Uni are very smart kids and can learn quickly,” he says. “Also, they understood that applying their mind to the problem would yield results. Even the very first matches that I watched showed that they were willing to spend time to think about their moves.”

Merli’s high opinion of Uni students extends beyond the chess board.

“If find [Uni] to be an interesting learning environment,” he says. “It seems to be very challenging for the students. They are very motivated and succeed not only in chess, but other areas of life.”

Uni memories

The payoff: Uni wins the 2008-09 IHSA state championship. Photo by John Garvey (click to enlarge)

In the end, though, it is the chess players Merli remembers the most. Of the dozens of Uni players he has coached, Merli remembers many for their special quirks and qualities, such as Shang Jiang ('04), who Merli remembers for always being in time trouble.

“He is the reason I gave up watching games during matches,” jokes Merli. “I had hair before I watched him.”

Other memorable players include Annie Liang ('07), who Merli recalls not just for being the only girl on her team but also for emerging as a leader, and Greg Atherton ('09), who Merli says “worked as hard as anyone to get up to second board.”

“I will also remember Gordon Ruan,” says Merli, “who started taking lessons from me when he was in fourth grade and is undoubtedly the strongest player that Uni has produced while I have been coach.”

As for any fond memories of his team through the years, Merli has many, and recent history continues to build onto those already existing memories.

“When I first started coaching, [Normal] U-High was the team to beat,” says Merli. “The first year we took the league championship from them was another memorable moment. Of course, this year will be one that I will remember for a very long time.”

Merli is referring to the IHSA state championship that his team earned this past February. And as he hoisted the trophy at the Peoria Civic Center, he couldn’t help but feel like he had done his job as a teacher.

“Chess trains you to realize the importance of thinking, planning, and patience,” he says. “It also teaches the value of persistence. The best players are not necessarily the greatest minds or have the deepest knowledge. The truly great players are those that treat every move as critical, and battle with themselves as much as their opponent to find the best move in every position.

"That is probably why the [2008-09] team pulled off the feat that had escaped recent teams of the past. They managed to dig deep and find something extra within themselves that allowed them to win games.”