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The small Great Southern town of Kendenup — population 1,000 — is honouring its school chess champions by turning old street trees into chess pieces.
Students from the Kendenup Primary School have consistently been winners in regional and state competitions, and even runners up in the National School Chess Championships in 2012.
They are punching above their weight — the school has just 80 students, yet its year five and six pupils have excelled against much larger and wealthier schools.
Town community development association secretary Valerie Saggers said the residents were proud of the achievements and decided to raise $3,000 to hire a local wood carver to sculpt giant chess pieces.
The local council was going to cut down the old jarrah trees that stand at the entrance to the town's main street, but agreed to trim them back to leave enough of the trunks to shape.
Darrel Radcliffe started on the project this week, beginning work on creating a king.
He aims to have a rook and a queen completed within two weeks.
When complete, the queen will stand 4 metres tall, with the rook and the king at almost 3 metres.
"When I got out here I was shocked by the size, but these are probably the biggest chainsaw carvings I've ever done," Mr Radcliffe said.
A former student of the Kendenup Primary school himself, he has also donated two pawns he had carved from jarrah to set in front.
"I'm really impressed, it's a bit like the olden days still where the community all gets together and does projects and helps clean up the place … they just do community based projects," he said.
"It's really good to see, that's why I came on board, to lend a hand and give a little bit back."
Another sculptor in the district is carving a giant knight that will eventually be moved into the street.
David Stockdale is also working with a chainsaw and a chisel to shape the jarrah trunk into public art.
School arts teacher Heather Fergie has been the driving force behind the students' success.
She started teaching chess eight years ago after creating tiny chess pieces in art classes.
She was shocked when her year six chess players won the regional schools chess championship in 2011, then followed it up with winning the state championships in Perth.
Kendenup then raised enough money to take the team to Melbourne, where they came eighth out of 16 teams.
The following year they were better prepared for the competition.
"We knew what we were up against. We even looked better, we got new uniforms, we practiced and we came — much to all of our amazement — we came second in Australia."
Ms Fergie attributes much of the students' success to a local chess master and wool grower Bill Sandilands.
Ms Fergie and volunteer Mr Sandilands hold chess classes every week, and have built a playground chess board so all the school kids can enjoy a game outside at any time.
"It's all about enthusiasm. Chess is self-motivating. Chess is like a puzzle and once you start to think about solving that puzzle it makes them think strategically," Ms Fergie said.
She said their success had been the key to producing more winners from the farming community.
"It is something the whole district has got behind and they are very proud," she said.
"We are a small school so it's very hard for us to be very good at anything because we are always competing against bigger schools. So it's very hard for us to get success, but I think success breeds enthusiasm"
Topics: board-and-card-games, street-art, kendenup-6323