Illustration by Melanie Snead
Corey Hancock sits at a table cloaked with a tournament-style chessboard at Brewer’s Cafe. He’s not playing at the moment, but rather talking about the origins of the Legacy Chess Academy, which teaches the game to 250 to 350 local students year-round. Hancock, 25, and his girlfriend and academy co-founder, JaVonne Bowles, started small with the Henrico Chess Club in 2014. As demand grew, they began offering classes and holding tournaments. Besides chess, their students learn coping strategies and character-building skills, Hancock says. Two years ago, “we started partnering with nonprofits because we really wanted to work with underserved, at-risk youth — so the nonprofits will get the grant funding for the program, so the kids and parents don’t pay anything.”
Something I love about Richmond is everyone’s very friendly here. Other places I’ve lived in, I felt like I wasn’t always welcome because of [my mixed racial heritage] — but here I’ve never felt like that’s a concern.
Something that drives me crazy about Richmond is I’m not used to the city life, so the stop lights, for one thing. Two is that it can get pretty quickly overcrowded when big events happen, but that’s also exciting.
A sign of progress that encourages me is the appreciation for the art culture here … seeing small businesses [nurtured], and communities that actually house residents who are artists.
I live in Manchester, as of [July]. I just moved with my girlfriend.
The book I’m reading now is: I’m not going to count chess books because I read like 30 at a time. … I do follow a lot of some of the speakers for entrepreneurship and motivation — like Tony Robbins, I’m reading one of his books right now.
"If I can do [it], I can teach the kids how they can do the same thing.”
I can’t live without my girlfriend, JaVonne. We’ll have been together five years in September — we met at Reynolds Community College. I was skeptical when she first started [playing chess] … but she actually took a genuine interest in it.
To relax, I like watching Netflix and Hulu. I like to laugh, so I watch comedy mostly, like “Scrubs,” “How I Met Your Mother” [and] “Family Guy.”
I find inspiration when I go back and see my family usually once a week, and have these one-on-one talks with [my mother]. She’ll just kind of teach me something and help me realize something I wouldn’t have realized on my own, and it gives me all the motivation in the world, for that week at least.
One of my proudest moments is: I had crippling anxiety when I was younger. I slowly transitioned out of it, and chess was one of those things that got me through it. So, now I’ve started challenging myself further by doing public speaking … I’m taking the thing I fear most — speaking in front of large groups of people — and saying, “OK, let me tackle this,” because if I can do that, I can teach the kids how they can do the same thing. That’s what I’m proudest of.
