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Yorkshire
Chess Association |
Last update: |
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Junior
Report 2002 |
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As in
previous years the under-11 and under-9 areas of junior chess have been the
most active and the most successful on the surface. Both mixed teams qualified
for their respective national finals and the under 9 team, playing in
Nottingham, managed a very respectable top ten finish (particularly as we only
just qualified from the northern area final) beating Greater Manchester by ½ a
point to be best placed northern team. The under 11 team had to travel to
Basingstoke in Hampshire (again!) and, after a very good first round, faded to
19th place out of 21 competing teams. Once again we had many of our
top players missing, as they were unwilling to travel 250-300 miles for a day
competition of three games. One encouraging factor is that the average age of
the team was only just 9 years and 13 of the 20 players are eligible to play
next year and (most of them) the year after as well. There is a kernel of very
young (the youngest is 6, of whom more later) and very keen players in this
group who will be the mainstay of the team for up to 5 years to come.
There
was no girl’s team this year because the national event was in London and
clashed with a local girls competition in Rotherham at which most of our
stronger girls were playing. I have now got a database of 20 girls in this age
group with whom my wife and I are hoping to work in the next two years to
develop an organisation to bring more girls into teams.
Peter
Cloudsdale was instrumental in bringing the BWCA girls championship to York
again this year and some of our girls were quite successful there. Peter also
organised the Pennine challenge match for NCCU under 16 teams, in York as I was
attending a wedding at the time.
The
oldest age group team (under-18) was third out of four in the NCCU championship
but this was very much a scratch team and a very young team once more. There
are nearly forty active players in the Sheffield league, York league and
Yorkshire league itself with gradings of 100+ and aged between 12 and 18 but
they are unwilling to play for the junior teams. In a way this is encouraging
because they are playing at a high level for their league teams and improving
their chess in this way, but it is infuriating to watch Northumberland win and
Lancashire come second when we could have a much stronger team.
The
British Land UK chess challenge grew to almost 4000 entrants in the Yorkshire
area and 98 schools took part (the national figures are now quite staggering-
56,000 players from 1,800 schools). The southern area Yorkshire Megafinal
(including most of the East and West Ridings) attracted 262 entries in age
groups from under-7 to under-18. Another 50-60 Yorkshire juniors entered the
Northumberland, Durham and North Yorkshire Megafinal in Sunderland. Of these
players 120 have qualified for the national Gigafinal in Sheffield on 20/21st
of July. I have an Excel spreadsheet with the names of over 300 juniors which
is available for any congress organisers who wish to contact juniors in their
areas and put on junior, under 60, under 80 or novice sections to which these
younger players might be attracted. We need to get them playing more regularly
against each other and weaker adult players so that they can improve their
games in competitions in which they do not get beaten easily in most of their
games.
The junior champions for
this year are:
Under 9 Thomas
Mavin (Yarm) AGE 6 South
YorksU-9 Daniel Waite
(Rotherham)
Under 12 Nipuna
Senaratne (Wakefield) AGE 8 South
Yorks U-12 Tom Whittaker
(Rotherham)
Girl Champion:
Heather Coupe (Rotherham)
The under 15 and under 18
championships are to be held in Rotherham on 29th June; entry
forms are available from Alan Coupe at this meeting or via e-mail at ycajunorg@aol.com.
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