Chess board champ
Cole Wilson, 12, a sixth-grader at Athey Creek Middle School, is already an accomplished chess player
VERN UYETAKE / West Linn Tidings
Athey Creek Middle School sixth-grader Cole Wilson plays an impromptu game against his coach, Radu Roua, a chess master. Wilson took the top title at the Chess for Success tournament and hopes to land first place at the upcoming Oregon Scholastic Chess Federation Championship. Below: To find competition at his level, 12-year-old chess champ Cole Wilson often looks to games on the Internet for opponents.
For West Linn sixth-grader Cole Wilson, the reason to play competitive chess is simple.
“I like the game,” said Wilson, an Athey Creek Middle School student. “I like the strategy.”
He also likes to win.
At age 12, Wilson is already a decorated chess competitor.
His trophies — which include more than a dozen plus a load of medals — sit on top of a bookcase in his bedroom, above soccer and baseball awards. Wilson took first place at the recent Chess for Success tournament, hosted by a nonprofit that organizes an annual competition for clubs and individual students.
He hopes to add another notch to his belt at the Oregon Scholastic Chess Federation Championship April 11 in Seaside. More than 300 finalists are scheduled to compete according to age groups.
Wilson said his interest began when he was a second-grader at Pacific Northwest Academy in Wilsonville.
There, he found Chess Vision, a company that provided instruction and coaching to the student chess club.
“I walked into the club and liked it,” he said, noting his play became more competitive as time progressed.
Chess Vision co-founder Tony Hann said Wilson is rare among his peers. Of students who play competitive chess in elementary school, only about 10 percent pursue the sport in middle school, by his estimates. It helps if parents are supportive, Haan said.
Wilson’s mother, Keri Spehalski, said she and her husband, Mark, aren’t the type to push.
They hired a private coach after their son “caught the bug” following an immediate tournament win.
“His coach said he thought (Wilson) had a natural talent to understand strategy and anticipate moves 12 paces ahead,” Spehalski said. “We wanted to support that.”
Wilson said chess primes his thinking skills, and he has adapted the reasoning and strategy he’s learned to other subject areas, such as math.
His mom said she has also noticed his strategic thinking abilities develop on the soccer field.
“When he plays soccer, you can almost see him thinking several moves ahead,” she said. “I think it applies to sports as well.”
Those types of skills develop over time. During weekly practices and after bigger matches, Wilson and his coach take notes and then analyze them. They review each move and its impact on the game. And they separate each match into the beginning, middle and end games.
Coach Radu Roua, a Romanian-born chess master, said it takes a lot of energy to compete at top tournaments.
At the state championship, players begin in the morning and finish in the evening. Although matches vary in length, they typically last about an hour, and there’s some waiting time in between rounds. If Wilson beats each opponent in the early rounds this month, he will face even tougher competition near the end of the day.
“Each game is like a mini-final,” Roua said. “You need to save energy as much as possible in those first rounds.”
Roua said he’s been pleased to watch Wilson climb from being a relative novice to a high-level competitor in the three years they’ve worked together.
“At first he wasn’t very confident in his play, but now he’s a state champion,” Roua said, adding that the benefits of playing chess will likely carry Wilson far into the future. “It develops the mind and decision-making skills he can use later in life.”