She is sitting in the dining room of her family home in Bellevue. Down the hall is her bedroom, which along one wall has a whole bunch of chess tournament trophies.

Along another wall is shelving containing toys from when she was much, much younger. Barbie dolls. Little horses. That’s in the past.

Crushing and squeezing your opponent. Such descriptions from an eighth-grader.

But that’s chess.

And that’s how Naomi won first place in Girls Under 13 at the weeklong World School Chess Championship that ended this month in Sochi, Russia.

And that’s how you compete in a game in which there are no women currently in the Top 100 in the World Chess Federation rankings. Only a handful of women have cracked that elite list.

These days, chess in the U.S. doesn’t command anywhere near the coverage it had when Bobby Fischer in 1972 mesmerized the world with his brilliance and dramatic flair in beating Boris Spassky for the world title. Full story.

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