LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A family that plays together stays together.
The Hennigs of Louisville play chess at home, at work, and even in the pool, and they are using the sport to help students in the classroom.
Ron Hennig is a math teacher, football coach and chess coach at Valley High School.
His father taught him how to play chess when he was about 10-years-old.
He paid it forward by teaching his four sons, Trey, Nathan, Teddy and Samuel.
“He just looked at us and said, ‘Come here boys. I’m going to teach you a man’s game,’” says Trey Hannig.
For Ron, chess is more than a game. It’s something his family will always have to share.
“When you’re 18 a lot of times, basketball and football come to an end whereas chess doesn’t come to an end,” says Ron.
With the help of his wife Leslie, who also coaches chess and teaches English, and a chess-centered related arts class at Conway Middle School, the small chess clubs at each school have turned into hundreds of players and multiple regional and national champions and awards.
Ron coaches multiple sports, but one of his chess team players, Valley High School junior Caleb Gray, is dedicated to just chess.
Caleb has been playing chess for most of his life. He knew how pieces moved before he could pedal a tricycle.
“I played my mother when I was three and I beat her,” says Caleb.
He began competing professionally in 5th grade.
In April, Caleb was crowned the K-12 Under 1200 National High School Champion, but he says winning isn’t everything.
“You do a lot of winning and you don’t get much out of it, but when you lose, you tend to learn from it,” says Caleb. “More enjoyable is when you have a really tough game because then you’ve got over somebody that was really competing with you,” says Caleb
That’s not the only life lesson students are learning from the game.
The couple says chess is helping students improve logic and problem solving and take responsibility for their actions.
Their students who play chess have also improved grades and self-confidence while reducing behavior problems.
“My heart melts when I watch students either click and learn something or I see them do something and they become successful and they feel good about it. That’s what I live for,” says Leslie.
The couple hopes to continue to grow their teams and not just in numbers.
“We want to create more diversity in chess as far as more females playing chess, just more diversity racially, more diversity with different beliefs, and we just want to find common ground through the game of chess,” says Leslie Hennig.
Their boys were key pieces in rounding up new players.
Each of their sons has won championships, but for Ron, the best prize is watching them teach other students.
“Because you don’t know anything until you can actually teach it and I know that they will take different paths and their lives, they have different goals but just to see that they have it inside them to have that teaching passion is very important to us being the teachers that we are,” says Ron.
Even after they graduate, the teachers believe their students will make good moves on the board and in life.
Each summer, the Hennings host a summer camp in their backyard.