There's a story DeVone Eurales tells that has nothing to do with chess, but explains everything about why he does this work.

He grew up in Cairo, Illinois. His brother was a sophomore when a freshman named Christopher Jackson — who would go on to play George Washington in Hamilton and hold the longest run as Simba in the original Broadway Lion King — was new to the school. Their drama club was modest, mostly radio work, announcing names. DeVone's brother recruited Jackson into it anyway.

"That really started his passion for the actual works," DeVone said.

One person. One invitation. One door opened that changed everything that followed.

That's the thing about chess, too.

DeVone is the school counselor for 7th through 12th graders at Galesburg's 7-12 complex, and he runs chess club across all those grades — junior high and high school both. Most of his players have never touched a board before they walk in. That's never bothered him. "I can teach you how to play chess in ten minutes," he tells them. They say no way. He puts a timer on. Eight minutes later, they've got it. Rooks move like a plus sign. Bishops move like an X. The pieces on one side mirror the other — you've learned the whole board.

"And then the more they play," he said, "the more nuanced they become."

Across town at Lombard Middle School, Jon Bradburn runs chess for 5th and 6th graders, and his club feeds directly into DeVone's. He's planning to send DeVone about 20 kids next year who already know how to play.

Jon has been in education for 30 years. He started as a classroom teacher in Monmouth, moved through Peoria and Knoxville, then came to Galesburg — principal at Gale Elementary, then HR director for three years, then principal at Silas Willard, then overseeing technology and operations across all seven district buildings. From any angle, he was on an administrator's arc. Pension calculations in Illinois are based on the best four of your last ten earning years. Steps down from administration means lower earnings, which means a smaller pension.

He stepped down anyway.

"As I was looking at the end of my career, I asked myself, what would make me happiest?" he said. "Teaching. Working with kids." He's two and a half years in now, does robotics in the fall and chess in the spring, and is teaching a spring term class at Knox College for aspiring middle school educators. "I don't really want to do anything else," he said.

What he sees on those 64 squares is not a game. It is, as he put it, never the same twice — and that's exactly the point. "It allows for linear thinking, it allows for pattern recognition, creative thinking," he said. He tells his students to try to be three moves ahead. Think through the chain: if I do this, then this happens, then what? "It helps with executive functioning," he said. "And there's a life lesson there. If I do this, then this is going to happen."

The question Jon cares about after every game isn't who won. It's what did you see that you didn't expect? What caught you? What can you use next time?

DeVone works the same concept from a different angle. "Short term and long term," he said. "This may be a great move right now." He connects it to decisions students are already making — taking a class because your best friend is in it, without stopping to ask what happens when you discover it's not really for you. Chess is a safe place to discover that lesson before it costs you something real.

And then there are the lessons that arrive uninvited.

DeVone has a student — quiet, unassuming, nobody in the room would pick him out — who wins. Consistently. Quickly. A more competitive student, certain of his own standing, sat down across from him. "He beat this guy in less than five minutes," DeVone said. "And this guy couldn't believe it. He was like, what happened?" The competitive kid walked away recalibrated. The quiet one just moved on to the next game.

That's also chess.

What both men notice, beyond the strategy and the humility, is something harder to plan for: connection. DeVone watches students who have shared classrooms their whole lives — who have barely spoken — find each other over a board. "You start to see them navigate the hallways together," he said. "These kids. Never really talked to each other. But now they've got a Connectivity."

No screens. No performance. Just two people, a board, and something shared.

"There's something to be said about sitting together with someone," Jon said. "We know that for some of these kids, sometimes the difference is one person. One person who sees something that gives you a reason to come to school."

DeVone's brother saw something in a freshman from Cairo that nobody else had acted on yet. One invitation to a modest little drama club. One switch flipped. The rest is Broadway history.

You never know.

"Learning begins with relationships," Jon said. "And the learning goes beyond the board."

Sixty-four squares. Infinite reach.