The Only Rated Female Chessplayer in Wyoming?

Elizabeth Scott paints a colorful life by Elysia Conner Wednesday, June 3, 2009 12:59 PM MDT Whoa! In an article profiling artist Elizabeth Scott, the author Elysia Conner of the Casper Journal made the following statement: Scott also is a competitive chess player and has won the Wyoming Reserve Chess champion title twice. She is the highest ranked woman chess player in the state, but also the only one, she pointed out. I sincerely hope Ms. Scott is not the lone chess femme in the entire state of Wyoming! Given the wording, I have assumed that Ms. Conner means that Ms. Scott is the only adult chess femme in the state, and she is not including scholastic chess players who are female. Checking further, I looked for and located the Wyoming Chess Association's website, but it doesn't seem to have been updated recently. Not a good sign! I clicked on several links and they were dead-ends to the information I was seeking - namely, a list of current rated players in the state of Wyoming. Maybe I was doing something wrong... I did come across the names of two chess femmes at the combined website of the Wyoming Chess Association and the Cheyenne Chess Club: Shira Evans and Barb Fortune. Personally, I find these names very evocative of two chess goddesses :) Shira Evans is a name out of my past! She was one of two chess femmes who provided me regular updates on her chess adventures while I had Chess Goddesses online between 2001 and 2004. I sent an email to Shira at the email listed at the website, but one of them bounced. I'm keeping my fingers crossed about the other one. I'll do some further checking to see if I can get in touch with her. Shira, if you read this, please email me. You can always reach me via the email at Goddesschess.com. The other lovely young lady who provided me with regular reports of her events for Chess Goddesses was Tatjana Plachinova, from Bulgaria. I was not able to locate her name this evening on the FIDE ratings list, so I assume either she got married and changed her name or she is no longer playing in FIDE-rated chess events. Tatjana, if you read this, I'd love to hear from you. So, I got totally distracted from my search on information about chess femmes in the state of Wyoming, and it's time to eat supper, so I'll report back at a later date!

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Update 10:13 p.m. I looked through the player listings at USCF's website twice for Wyoming, and as far as I can determine, Ms. Elizabeth Scott IS the only current adult female player in the entire state: 103 2582914 010-01-31 LIZABETH G SCOTT 414 009-03-01 Shira Evans' information showed up, but the last update was from January, 2006.