Jack, 2025 Ohio Pathfinder Cohort
Last year, on a bright September afternoon, Cincinnati Reds outfielder Will Benson gazed across his chessboard at Jack Hanneken, an elementary school student, considering what his next move should be.
“You stumped him for a little bit,” mom Julia Hanneken tells her son, recalling the game.
Benson, an avid chess player, had invited members of the Cincinnati Chess Community to the Great American Ball Park to play against him. You’d think that a kid would be nervous going up against a high-profile adult player. Not Jack.
“I was pretty confident about it,” he says. “Chess is kind of my comfort area.”
Now 9 and headed into fourth grade, Jack excels in chess because he’s always thinking a few steps ahead. “Chess is basically all strategy. You never know where your opponent’s gonna play, but you can think about what they’re gonna do, and try to block it and attack at the same time.”
He has always been this way: a self-starter in search of a new challenge. Julia and dad Rick were surprised to see him complete as many as ten wooden puzzles simultaneously at just 21 months old. By age five, he was finishing 300-piece puzzles all by himself, as well as adult-level word searches and crosswords.
In kindergarten, he would draw nine-by-nine Sudokus for his teachers and create personalized crossword puzzles about his friends. He enjoys playing games and doing puzzles with his sister Maria (now 8) and little brother Wells (5).
Jack started chess as a kindergartener, learning the basics from a program he found on his school tablet, then studying strategy books on his own before working with coaches.
“He’s always loved to study and teach himself,” Julia adds.
But not all challenges can be overcome alone. Sometimes a team is required. While Jack’s self-guided learning worked wonders, the Hannekens needed significant support accelerating his math education in school.
Jack’s acceleration started easily enough: in first grade after his CogAT (Cognitive Abilities Test) results came back, the school offered single-subject acceleration in math. Jack moved into second-grade math that November.
By the following year, Jack was flying through the third-grade math curriculum as a second-grader. His math teacher nominated him for National Math Stars — which would soon change the trajectory of Jack’s elementary school education.
By third grade, Jack was moving much too fast for the school’s single-subject advancement to keep up. Working on 4th-grade math was an academic mismatch. Jack began carrying a pre-algebra book with him everywhere he went, working through it and solving the problems on his own for fun.
“When I solve a problem, it’s kind of like, ‘yes!’ It just feels good,” he says.
As third grade got underway, Julia requested more options. “I set up a meeting with the school in December. I said, ‘Hey, single-subject acceleration has worked, but he’s now ready to blaze his own trail. I appreciate that he’s gone one subject up, but he is now computing quadratic equations,’” Julia recalls. The conversation lurched along for months, then stalled with no resolution.
It was then that National Math Stars fully entered the picture, after Jack was accepted into their 2025 Pathfinder cohort. The support the family received began to turn the tide. Ambika, Jack’s new NMS advisor, immediately began researching district and state acceleration laws, drafting formal documents, and joining meetings between the school and the family.
Despite these efforts, it became clear that the school could not give Jack access to math at his level. Looking for alternatives, Jack began to take Art of Problem Solving (AoPS) online classes in his spare time while the family, aided by NMS, applied to a local magnet school for gifted children. Classes there go from 3rd to 12th grade, so he’d be able to attend 9th-grade math classes as a 4th grader.
After reviewing Jack’s CogAT and iReady scores, the school’s principal offered Jack the chance to shadow Algebra 1 and take the middle school math placement test in the spring. When he crushed the test, he earned the opportunity to choose a path for himself.
“He’s excited to try out the new school,” Julia says while Jack smiles.
Their experience was not unlike a chess game: moves, counter-moves, and adjustments in strategy. Through all of it, Jack has never lost his passion for new challenges: soccer, baseball, piano, cubing, robotics and Cub Scouts — in addition to exploring new frontiers in math.
He’s also had a chance to spend time with other Stars. Jack participated in the 2026 Math Kangaroo competition at a site set up by NMS. He and other Stars celebrated after the contest with a trip to an arcade. When the results came back, Jack was the only Ohioan third-grader to achieve a perfect score.
While the chess board will always remain a place of confidence, it turns out that Jack has quite a few comfort areas. For his mom and dad, the comfort lies in knowing that there’s a team behind them, ensuring Jack can take his talents as far as he wants.
