At this year's Letterman Celebration, Atkins graduate and state chess champion William Odom was inducted into the Letterman Hall of Fame in the area of Academics. here is the speech given by his Chess coach, Scott Plaster:
It is my honor tonight to induct William Odom from the class of 2018 into our Letterman Hall of Fame in the category of Academics. William also graduated from East Carolina and is now working in his field as a chemist.
William is the best chess player to ever graduate from Atkins, and through hundreds upon hundreds of hours of hard work, he captured the State Championship Chess title as a senior. The story of how he got there is the story of a true champion. He probably doesn’t want me to say this, but when he came to Atkins, William was only OK at Chess, starting out at a measly 621 rating. William’s sophomore year, his chess journey really began. I’m not sure what exactly went on in his mind, but everyone around him, including me as his coach, could see a difference in his temperament. It’s still hard for me to imagine that William devoted three to five hours a day to the sport of chess, and he didn’t take the summers off. And I did mean to say Sport. Chess is recognized by over 100 countries and the International Olympic Committee as a sport, and at William’s level, it truly is. Research shows that high-level chess players burn as many calories as a five-mile run in a single 2-hour game, and can burn so many calories they may lose weight during a multi-day tournament. When we went to the Supernationals event William’s senior year (where William finished sixth in the nation in his division), we played up to three, four-hour games in a single day. William was also a wrestler at Atkins, and he’s the perfect example of how the mind and body work together in the success of a champion. His regime included sleep, nutrition, training, study, and competition, just like any other top athlete.
William’s devotion and dedication to chess has been unparalleled in my coaching career, so it was not unusual that the following highlight happened —The famous knight and bishop checkmate. If you don’t know chess, that would be the equivalent of a basketball player (other than Caitlyn Clark, at least) making a half court buzzer beater – blind folded. I guess what I am saying is that William Odom is like the Caitlyn Clark of Chess. For this checkmate, I usually tell my players to not even worry about it because it’s probably never going to happen. A few years ago, there was even a world chess champion who couldn’t do it, and got a draw instead of a win. But not everyone is William Odom. As it turns out, William had studied this exact method the very week of an upcoming tournament. Playing in a very tough match, his opponent sacrificed a piece, just knowing that William would not be able to checkmate him with just a knight and bishop. With very little time left on his clock, William mated his very shocked opponent. It was really neat for me to meet this player, a middle aged man who had been playing for years, about a month or two ago. He still remembered that very game six years ago and how he had gotten beaten by the high school player from Atkins with just a knight and bishop.
William Odom embodies all of the qualities of a champion: determination, hard work, never settling for just good enough, wanting to be the very best. It is almost unachievable that a player starting serious chess play as a ninth grader could rise to be the best student chess player in the state all in the matter of four years, but how he did it is the story of a true champion, and that is why he is being inducted into our hall of fame. Congratulations, William!