This Awesome 16-Year-Old Wants To Be The Youngest African American Chess Grandmaster
Posted: 12/19/2014 11:01 am EST Updated: 1 hour ago
Nico Pitney
Senior Editor, The Huffington Post
There were plenty of signs that 16-year-old Joshua Colas was a chess prodigy.
“He told me one day, ‘Daddy, I can play you blindfolded,'” his father Guy Colas recounted to The Huffington Post. “And I said, ‘You sure? I’ve never seen you practice.'”
Joshua was right; he could not only match his dad but beat him, with his eyes closed.
At age 12, Joshua became the youngest African American chess master in history. This past weekend, he won the national chess championship for the second consecutive year.
Now a high school junior, Joshua’s goal is to attain the highest rank in chess, grandmaster. His family is running an Indiegogo campaign to cover the requisite tournament fees and travel costs. So far, they have raised just over $4,000 — but they only have until next week to raise a lot more.
“He wants to be the role model for all these other kids from poor neighborhoods everywhere, to understand that chess is not only for the rich kids and for the smartest kids,” his father said. “He wants to show, if you work hard enough, you can reach the top level.”
The Colas family lives just north of New York City, but both of Joshua’s parents were born in Haiti. Joshua grew up watching his dad play chess, and at age seven he asked to be taught the rules.
Within months, Guy said, “I was giving him puzzles that people who’d been playing chess for years couldn’t solve, and he was able to solve them instantly.”
Full article here.
Good luck! He can do it.