The Story of the Generals

The school

Miami Jackson Senior High sits in Allapattah, a working-class neighborhood in northwest Miami. In the 1990s it served one of the poorest, most immigrant-dense communities in Miami-Dade County: students who were largely Black and Hispanic, many from families newly arrived from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and across the Caribbean. Players came from Overtown, Liberty City, Little Haiti, and Wynwood; for many of them, moving to Allapattah was a step up. The press of the era did not sugarcoat any of it. Jackson was counted among the most downtrodden schools in the county, and in 2002 only 48 percent of its students graduated in four years. Its teams are the Generals. It was the chess team that made the name famous.

“These kids don't have swimming pools, soccer and baseball fields, so they sit around and play chess. And when they do well, they become heroes… Who ever has given some of them that much attention?”

A club by accident, 1992

The program began with lunchtime chess in the cafeteria. Mario Martinez, a social studies teacher and amateur player who had never entered a tournament, played casual games with a fellow teacher while students gathered to watch. When that colleague transferred to another school, the students who had been watching challenged Martinez themselves. Their enthusiasm startled him. He brought in chess books, started going over games with them, and his social studies room turned into a noontime and after-school chess club.

Then he took it further. Citing research that chess sharpens academic skills, Martinez persuaded skeptical administrators to approve a chess elective. He named it Critical Thinking. It met at 7:30 in the morning, drew more than twenty students, and came stocked with chess books and a computer running Fritz. Some players found the team in stranger ways: one learned the moves from classmates while serving detention in Martinez's homeroom, and watched his grades climb two letter grades within a year. “Football and baseball are great,” Martinez said, “but why aren't we instilling a game that is what education is all about, using your mind?”

The results were immediate. In that first school year the club won the Dade County Championship and shared the Florida state title. Martinez was no chess master himself; the team's top players could all beat him, and veterans teased newcomers that an opponent was so weak he “can't even beat 'Tinez.” His gift was different. He raised money relentlessly, kept petty rules to a minimum, brought any interested student along to tournaments, and made kids believe they belonged at the top boards.

The dynasty, 1993 to 1997

The Generals won the monthly county tournaments without interruption, every single one for years on end, and took the county championship eight years running. The individual county champions came in a line: Jose Bonilla in 1993, Joel Centeno in 1994, Juan Barry in 1995, Sedrick Roundtree in 1996 and 1997, Gilberto Luna in 1998. Barry, a Cuban immigrant who learned the game on the streets of Havana, quit his starting spot on the basketball team for chess and won the 1996 state championship as Jackson took its second state title. That year the team raised money for its first trip to nationals in New Jersey and finished 14th of 75 teams; the next year it climbed to 4th at nationals in Knoxville.

In March 1997 the Miami Herald's Tropic magazine put the team on its pages in John Dorschner's feature about the Knights of Allapattah: the 6 a.m. Saturday gatherings in the alley behind the school, the caravan of rusted jalopies to tournaments in Boca Raton, Oelmy Paniagua working the door of a nightclub until 4 a.m. and playing chess by 8, and grades rising across the roster. Juan Barry put the culture change bluntly: the team “started changing the stereotype. Now, even the gangstas respect the chess players.”

Marcel arrives, December 1997

Marcel Martinez, a prodigy trained in a special Havana chess school, stepped off a plane at Miami International on December 19, 1997. He was 17, spoke no English, and carried his chess books. His parents, who had won a visa lottery, worked minimum wage at a Hialeah lamp factory. Weeks later he appeared at a local tournament and left the room gasping. Coach Martinez, no relation, said simply: “I was in awe.” Arden Dilley reached for a bigger comparison: “I started teaching chess 25 years ago, and I've never seen anybody like him. Getting Marcel out of Cuba was like getting El Duque out of Cuba. It just doesn't happen.”

Marcel enrolled at Jackson and commuted nearly three hours a day from Hialeah by bus and Metrorail. By February 1998 he was rated 2275, the only high school master in Florida, and would play the Critical Thinking class blindfolded, two boards at once, reciting every piece's position when the games ended.

1998: the Dream Team

The season swept upward: the South Florida regional in February, the state title in March, and in May the National High School Championship in Los Angeles, where Jackson tied Philadelphia's elite Masterman school at the top of the standings to finish as National co-Champions, and won the National Quick Chess team title outright. Marcel went a perfect 7-0 for the individual national championship, beating the defending champion in the last game of the whole tournament to finish, with CNN cameras on the final round. And he won it with style. When his opponent fumbled the clock and accidentally gifted him extra time, Marcel sat without moving until his advantage had drained away to equality, then won the game anyway. The opponent's father told him, “You truly are a champion.”

CNN came to Allapattah. A New Yorker who saw the broadcast was so taken with the team that he bankrolled a 23-day trip to Hawaii, where Marcel beat several grandmasters across three tournaments, including England's national champion Julian Hodgson. The team celebrated with a Disney trip and an awards luncheon, and all of it is in the photo albums: regionals, states, nationals, Hawaii, Disney, the luncheon.

Two of Marcel's wins over grandmasters were preserved on the team's original website, move for move:

1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 c6 3. c4 Nf6 4. e3 e6 5. b3 Nbd7 6. Bd3 Bd6 7. Bb2 O-O 8. O-O Qe7 9. Ne5 a5 10. a3 c5 11. Nd2 b6 12. Qc2 cxd4 13. exd4 Bb7 14. Nxd7 Qxd7 15. c5 Rfc8 16. b4 h6 17. Qd1 Bb8 18. Qe2 Qe7 19. f4 axb4 20. axb4 Rxa1 21. Bxa1 Bc7 22. Bb2 Ra8 23. Bb1 Ra4 24. Bc3 Ra3 25. Qe3 Qd7 26. Bc2 bxc5 27. bxc5 Ne4 28. Bxe4 dxe4 29. Nc4 Rb3 30. Ra1 Qd5 31. Ne5 f6 32. Ng4 Qf5 33. Nf2 Bxf4 34. Qe1 e3 35. Nh3 Bg5 36. Rc1 e2 0-1

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. g3 Bg7 4. Bg2 O-O 5. Nc3 d6 6. Nf3 c5 7. O-O Nc6 8. dxc5 dxc5 9. Bf4 Be6 10. Ne5 Na5 11. Qc2 Nh5 12. Rad1 Qc8 13. Nd5 Re8 14. Bd2 Bf5 15. e4 Bxe5 16. exf5 Nc6 17. fxg6 hxg6 18. Rfe1 Bd4 19. Bg5 e6 20. Nc3 Bf6 21. g4 Bxg5 22. gxh5 Nd4 23. Qd3 Kg7 24. Ne4 Be7 25. b4 b6 26. bxc5 bxc5 27. Qg3 Qb8 28. f4 Rh8 29. hxg6 Bh4 30. Qc3 Bxe1 31. Rxe1 Qxf4 32. Ng3 Qh4 33. h3 Rab8 34. gxf7 Kxf7 35. Qa3 Nf5 36. Rf1 Qd4+ 37. Kh1 Kg6 38. Nxf5 exf5 39. Qxa7 Qe3 40. Qc7 Rxh3+ 0-1

1999 and 2000: individual glory

In August 1999, freshly graduated, Marcel won the U.S. Junior Championship in San Francisco against a field that included the U.S. women's champion Irina Krush. The next spring the torch passed. Rodelay Medina, who learned chess at age seven in Cuba and balanced schoolwork with a job, went to the 2000 nationals in Charlotte as a heavy underdog in a field of 1,395 players that included ten masters and a women's international master. He scored 6.5 out of 7 and finished at the top as national co-champion. Jackson had produced two individual national champions in three years.

2002: champions again

The program kept producing. A fifth state title came in 2001, and in April 2002, in Louisville, Kentucky, a team of four players who had never touched competitive chess before high school won the U1300 division of the National High School Championship: senior Clifton Brown, junior and team captain Victor Agosto, and sophomores Alan Estrada and Joseph Lopez. After four rounds they sat in 13th place. They won every game the rest of the way, overtaking Columbus Alternative of Ohio, with Brown, a 260-pound football lineman, winning the decisive final game. “It's kind of like an underdog Rocky-esque-type thing,” Agosto told the Sun-Sentinel. Nobody on that team would disagree.

The legacy

A movie was promised as early as 1999, when a production group that included Whitney Houston's and Antonio Banderas's companies optioned the story after that CNN broadcast. It took two decades. Critical Thinking (2020), named for Martinez's chess class and directed by John Leguizamo, finally put the 1998 Dream Team on screen, with the real coach and players consulting. The full story of the film is on The Movie page.

The players carried chess forward in their own ways. Marcel became a Life Senior Master with two IM norms and a GM norm, tied for first at the 2004 U.S. Open, and coaches young Florida players today. Rodelay made National Master, founded and captained the Miami Dade College chess team, and was still playing rated tournaments two decades later. Gil Luna became a chess teacher and organizer in Miami and served as the film's chess advisor. And Coach Martinez, after 32 years of teaching, went right back to teaching chess to elementary schoolers in retirement.

Beyond the trophies, Martinez and the M-DSCA trained hundreds of county teachers to bring chess into their classrooms, and the players themselves credited the game with turned-around grades and redirected lives. Everything on this page comes from the archive itself: the original website, the press coverage, and the team's own records, with details verified against sources gathered in the project's research files.