Julio Catalino Sadorra BS’13 moved from the Philippines to UT Dallas when he was a freshman with two goals – get an excellent education and compete on the world stage with a nationally ranked collegiate chess team. Sadorra, a grandmaster, the highest ranking for a chess player, now puts his chess skills and his degree in Business Administration (with a concentration in entrepreneurship) from the Naveen Jindal School of Management to use as coach of the University’s 20-member chess team.

Two of those members are students in JSOM. Rahul Srivasthav Peddi, double majoring in finance and economics, was recently named a grandmaster, having scored 100 percent for the UTD team in his first ever Pan-American Tournament, which helped qualify UTD for the 2022 President’s Cup. Tarini Goyal, a Business Analytics graduate student who arrived this fall from India, is ranked a woman international master (a step below grandmaster). She is the team’s only female member.

Goyal recognizes the challenges she has overcome in a sport notoriously short of women players. “In my opinion, female players face issues around travel to tournaments, societal pressure to focus on fields other than chess, instances of discrimination and harassment, and overall fewer role modelsat different stages of their careers,” she said. One major barrier: Attending training camps. “Traveling alone is sometimes risky due to safety concerns and traveling with a guardian is not always feasible due to logistical and financial constraints.”

Peddi is also from India, although fellow team members come from around the globe including Bulgaria, Peru, Spain, the U.S. “UTD is known to be diverse, which helped me quite a lot,” he said. “The chess program has been helping me since the beginning, through my application process, travel process, tournament planning, chess improvement – too many ways to specify. They have been helping me become a better chess player while encouraging me to do well in school.”

Goyal is grateful for UTD’s chess-friendly environment which will allow her to train with Sadorra and pursue her woman grandmaster training. “I can also work with my teammates, who are highly accomplished players in the field,” she said.

With international competitions, practice schedules and COVID-19 upheavals, Sadorra has tapped into his innovation training to keep the team in top form and ready to face new challenges.

“In Spring 2020 … competitions were moved online,” Sadorra said. The chess world quickly adapted to online chess platforms and Zoom (to prevent cheating). “I had to help the players see Zoom and online chess clubs as the tournament venue in this new world,” he said. Added to team practices were webcams so players learned to feel comfortable.

I like the process of helping players go through the cycle of chess success—training and preparation, competing, losing, more training and more preparation – while learning from mistakes and winning, and reminding them to stay hungry, – Sadorra

Chess is way more than a game, Sadorra said, noting different skills successful players learn calculation, visualization, patience, self-control and ownership of game outcomes. “In general, competitive players, especially at master level, are also good at recognizing patterns. High-level players have stored hundreds to thousands of patterns in their head and use this to make decisions quickly at various moments in the game.”

Peddi said chess also helps him with his work ethic. “Studying chess is quite time-consuming, and when I play tournaments, the stress is natural, which might hinder my academic performance.” For Goyal, chess has taught her to stay calm in stressful situations like exams and job interviews.

This past year, the UTD team racked up notable wins, earning a berth in the 2022 President’s Cup, the pinnacle of collegiate chess. It was the UTD team’s 18th trip in 22 years to “The Final Four of College Chess” tournament and is ranked No. 4 nationwide.

“I like the process of helping players go through the cycle of chess success—training and preparation, competing, losing, more training and more preparation – while learning from mistakes and winning, and reminding them to stay hungry,” Sadorra said, reflecting on his entrepreneurial approach to training. “The results will always be there but if we genuinely care about changing any result, we must also keep training, study our process and intentionally minimize unforced errors moving forward.”