photo by Brie Cohen

At his home Friday, Freeborn County Recorder Kelly Callahan shows what the chessboard looked liked and the moves that he and his opponent made during a chess tournament. Now that Callahan no longer competes in chess tournaments, he is teaching his grandson how to play the game.

Checkmate

Recorder Kelly Callahan enjoys chess

Staff

Published Tuesday, June 24, 2008

He learned the rules of the game when he was 6 and played competitively through high school and college. Now he’s teaching his grandson how to play. For most of Freeborn County Recorder Kelly Callahan’s life, achess was the name of the game.

“It teaches you so much,” Callahan said. “There’s many things to be learned from playing chess.”

To play in a chess tournament, he said, players must be physically and psychologically fit. Callahan once played a match in college that lasted five hours — a match that he won.

Chess teaches people how to think, concentrate, think ahead and learn from mistakes. These are all skills Callahan is passing on to his 5-year-old grandson, Dylan, as he teaches him the game.

“It isn’t a game of chance. You can either beat the person you’re playing or you can’t,” he said. “It’s just basically skill. There’s no luck involved.”

Callahan himself learned strategy and tricks of the trade as he went along. Through various books and by playing others, he learned how to win often.

When Callahan was young, his mother was teaching at the Northside School and taking classes through Minnesota State University-Mankato. During that time, Callahan would stay with another family where the two boys taught him how to play chess.

He grew up in the time of Bobby Fischer, the first American to beat the Russians at an international chess tournament. Fischer played Boris Spassky in 1972 in Reykjavik, Iceland, and won the World Chess Championship for America.

“He was the only Cold War hope for the U.S.,” Callahan said. “It was really a big deal when he beat those guys.”

Callahan played on and off until high school, he said, where he first started competing in 10th grade.

As a senior at Albert Lea High School, Callahan and the chess team lost their coach to the tennis team — which, Callahan will triumphantly tell you, did not win a game that season — and struggled to get a team to attend the state high school chess tournament in 1972.

Normally the chess team would take 12 students to the state competition — three teams of four — but that year they were struggling to make one team. Callahan said they practically dragged a fourth person to the Twin Cities so Albert Lea would qualify.

Once up there, Callahan and his teammates had a difficult time checking into the hotel because they did not have a faculty adviser, he said. Luckily the coach from another team, who was waiting behind them in line, vouched for the boys. They were able to compete in the tournament.

Callahan still has the trophy where the Albert Lea team was named the South East Region High School Team Champion in 1972 by the Minnesota State Chess Association.

He said the trophy belongs at the high school with the other two chess championship trophies won during Callahan’s time at ALHS, but he doesn’t dare give it back without the blessing of the other three on his team.

Callahan placed first at many tournaments through the years. He still talks fondly of a few matches that were particularly challenging.

While in college at the University of Minnesota-Duluth — Callahan’s “golden years,” he said — he competed at the Trans-Mississippi competition in St. Cloud. During the first round Callahan’s opponent attempted an opening he learned from a book but got the moves out of sequence. Within the first few moves Callahan got him.

“I thought I was pretty smart,” he said. “I was the talk of the tournament the first round there.”

In college, Callahan taught advanced chess, and during the summers he would return to Albert Lea and play on the city’s team.

After playing more competitions than he can count, he said his last tournament was in the early 1980s. Callahan said he didn’t have the commitment or time to continue after he moved back to Albert Lea.

“You’ve got to stay at it in order to stay sharp,” he said.

Callahan has many chess sets scattered through his house. He still has the original set he competed with, which he uses to teach his grandson. Dylan knew how to move the pieces when he was 4, and now at 5 he understands where to place the knight to control nearly half the board.

“One day a light goes on in your head, and you’re like, ‘I get it,’” Callahan said.

Age: 53

Address: 311 Lloyd Place, Albert Lea

Family: wife, Sue; son, Patrick, 27; daughter, Erin, 23; grandson, Dylan, 5

Livelihood: Freeborn County recorder

Interesting fact: For people interested in learning chess, Callahan recommends “The Complete Chess Player,” by Fred Reinfeld.

---

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE THIS STORY?

---