Stephanie Ballom

Stephanie Ballom in “Sweet 16″ magazine back in 2005

The above article is not from NEW IN CHESS, but Guideposts Sweet 16 magazine. More on the NEW IN CHESS later. This article was titled, “Queen of the Board” and written by Lisa Freeman. It was about Stephanie Ballom who (at the time) had just won the 1st All-Girls National Championship in Chicago, Illinois. The article written stated that she had troubles in school until she picked up a book on how to play chess in the bookstore. She stated when she read the strategies in the chess book, something clicked and her grades started to improve.

Stephanie Ballom was a standout at Mansfield Highschool in Mansfield, Texas and won a $30,000 scholarhip to University of Texas-Dallas. Despite winning this opportunity, she decided to attend Texas Tech University. Now a sophomore, she is able to keep chess as one of her activities since GM Susan Polgar took a position there run SPICE, the Susan Polgar Insititute for Chess Excellence.

Here is the full article from the Chess Drum.