Source: New York Daily News / Getty
Nearly a decade ago, the documentary Brooklyn Castle was released. The South by Southwest 2012 Film Festival Award Winner covered five students from Williamsburg’s I.S. 318 during their 2009-2010 school year at the chess powerhouse, where 7 out of 10 of the middle school’s students lived below the poverty line.
Rochelle “The Competitor” Ballantyne, then 17 years old and the only female protagonist of the five teens, was being heralded as one of the top young chess minds at the time. But she promptly quit without warning and went to Stanford University on a full scholarship to pursue her law degree.
Now, after completing her studies at Stanford, Columbia, and New York Universities, Ballantyne is coming back to the game with a renewed focus. She said she’s ready to finally fulfill the promise of becoming the first Black woman chess master in the U.S. But with the gift of maturity, Ballantyne has also had a different perspective of the burden that comes with that, too.
“I was tired of… having to show up and fight for my right to belong. I have to do that in every other aspect of my life, and I didn’t want to do it in the one aspect where it really should not matter. So I stopped,” Ballantyne told NBCLX.
“With this blossoming Black American dual identity, I became increasingly mindful of the fact that I was one of only a handful of Black girl competitors at tournaments,” she similarly relayed to KasparovChess. “[S]pecifically being a Black woman meant that people assumed I was less of a threat, but when I did win, my identity was erased altogether as I was considered an exception.”
This is a different and more sober take than the chess winner had ten years ago.
“When I first started playing, [my grandmother] introduced to me the idea of being the first African-American female chess master,” Ballantyne said in a 2012 interview with Teen Vogue. Ballantyne was first exposed to the game at eight years old and felt like it was a punishment. However, her aptitude for chess shone through fast, and her grandmother pushed her for more.
“I didn’t think about it much because for me it seemed like an impossible feat, and I didn’t think it could happen,” Ballantyne later added. “But then after she died [during the filming of Brooklyn Castle], that really affected me because she was the one person that always had confidence in me. She never pushed me, and she always respected me for who I was. I have to reach that goal for her.”
Three years after sitting down with Teen Vogue, then 18-year-old Ballantyne appeared at the 2015 World Youth Chess Championship, where she lost four of her nine matchups and had an early trip back home. But she wasn’t deterred in her quest for the distinction of becoming the first woman Black chess master in the U.S.
Last March, Brooklyn Castle was re-released to celebrate its 10-year anniversary. Soledad O’Brien, who interviewed Ballantyne and three other ladies for Cover Girls’ #GirlsCan movement, moderated the conversation amongst the movie’s stars.
However, Ballantyne is thankful for the opportunities chess has given her, and she wants to pay it forward to the next generation, too. “I still think kids deserve the world,” she told the U.S. Chess Federation/Chess Life Online last month, “and I hope to continue working towards giving it to them in whatever way I can.”
