Surrey County Junior Selectors?

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Roger de Coverly
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Re: Surrey County Junior Selectors?

Post by Roger de Coverly » Mon Mar 06, 2017 11:06 pm

David Shepherd wrote:I suspect however the whole thing causes some confusion to parents and also chess players - hence the original question :(
Isn't the point really that "Surrey" doesn't run U11 teams? Instead it's localised to Wey Valley, Richmond and CCF.

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David Shepherd
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Re: Surrey County Junior Selectors?

Post by David Shepherd » Mon Mar 06, 2017 11:13 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote: Isn't the point really that "Surrey" doesn't run U11 teams? Instead it's localised to Wey Valley, Richmond and CCF.
Not really no.

My understanding for EPSCA purposes is Richmond doesn't include any of Surrey, Wey Valley includes all of Surrey, CCF does not currently feature in any way in EPSCA. In order to avoid any confusion the Surrey I refer to is the current physical county of Surrey and not any areas that were previously in Surrey and now in London and not any County Chess Association.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Surrey County Junior Selectors?

Post by Roger de Coverly » Mon Mar 06, 2017 11:26 pm

David Shepherd wrote: In order to avoid any confusion the Surrey I refer to is the current physical county of Surrey and not any areas that were previously in Surrey and now in London and not any County Chess Association.
If you are a chess parent or a chess trainer, does the Surrey County Association run any under 11 teams? I assume not, possibly incorrectly.

Paul McKeown
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Re: Surrey County Junior Selectors?

Post by Paul McKeown » Mon Mar 06, 2017 11:44 pm

David Shepherd wrote:My understanding for EPSCA purposes is Richmond doesn't include any of Surrey
Surrey County Chess - for adults - is based on historical boundaries rather than the present administrative county. In that sense, Richmond includes a significant chunk of Surrey (in terms of population) that is now part of Greater London. The "county" of "Surrey" used in adult chess includes this part of Greater London.

People should not view the EPSCA Inter-association Championship as a counties competition. It most emphatically is not. If some crazed administrator really wants to align EPSCA's association with county chess boundaries (which are a weird mishmash of "counties" from various stages of English government history, using haphazard historical boundaries that generally bear little resemblance to reality), then you would end up taking the axe to Barnet, splitting it amongst Hertfordshire, Essex and Middlesex, whilst Richmond, would be split into Surrey and Middlesex. Wey Valley would be subsumed into Surrey, and Newham would disappear into Essex. That's just in London. I wouldn't like to hazard a guess what would happen in the rest of the country. You would lose lots of very hard-working junior organisers in the process, who would ask themselves why they should bother helping people who don't actually give a damn for their efforts. You wouldn't improve anything. There would be far fewer counties than there are associations, and there would therefore be less opportunity for children to participate, even if the counties were able to take up where associations left off. County chess is on its last legs in much of the country; it doesn't make sense to ruin junior chess to fit a fading paradigm.

Paul McKeown
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Re: Surrey County Junior Selectors?

Post by Paul McKeown » Mon Mar 06, 2017 11:45 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
David Shepherd wrote: In order to avoid any confusion the Surrey I refer to is the current physical county of Surrey and not any areas that were previously in Surrey and now in London and not any County Chess Association.
If you are a chess parent or a chess trainer, does the Surrey County Association run any under 11 teams? I assume not, possibly incorrectly.
"Surrey" does not participate in EPSCA.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Surrey County Junior Selectors?

Post by Roger de Coverly » Mon Mar 06, 2017 11:50 pm

Paul McKeown wrote:
People should not view the EPSCA Inter-association Championship as a counties competition.
I doubt it ever was. Locally there was a Wycombe (and District) Primary Schools Association which was geographically based. If it competed against other similar "town" based associations, then so be it.

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David Shepherd
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Re: Surrey County Junior Selectors?

Post by David Shepherd » Mon Mar 06, 2017 11:54 pm

As far as I am aware SCA doesn't currently run any U11 teams. Historically it possibly ran the U11 Whitehead Cup Girls team (I think this team event last took place in 2009), but I can't quite remember. Wey Valley doesn't run any teams older than under 11.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Surrey County Junior Selectors?

Post by Roger de Coverly » Mon Mar 06, 2017 11:59 pm

David Shepherd wrote:As far as I am aware SCA doesn't currently run any U11 teams.
John Upham wrote:I would like to contact the official Surrey County junior (U11 and U13) selectors and don't know who they are.
That answers the original question. You cannot contact the "official Surrey County U11 junior selectors", because they don't exist.

Richard James
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Re: Surrey County Junior Selectors?

Post by Richard James » Mon Mar 06, 2017 11:59 pm

Confused? You will be!

Historically, EPSCA was, as far as I understand it, a competition between LEAs rather than counties. In some areas they were the same thing, in other areas they were different.

Back in the 1970s/80s, there were many primary schools with a headteacher or other senior member of staff who was keen on chess and taught all the pupils to play. Schools within an LEA would form a league and the best players from the league would be selected to represent their LEA in the EPSCA competitions.

Of course junior chess is no longer run in this way - and is run in very different ways in different parts of the country.

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David Shepherd
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Re: Surrey County Junior Selectors?

Post by David Shepherd » Tue Mar 07, 2017 12:34 am

Roger de Coverly wrote:
David Shepherd wrote:As far as I am aware SCA doesn't currently run any U11 teams.
John Upham wrote:I would like to contact the official Surrey County junior (U11 and U13) selectors and don't know who they are.
That answers the original question. You cannot contact the "official Surrey County U11 junior selectors", because they don't exist.
That however isn't the most helpful of replies - the issue is that there are some children that just want to play chess for their county and if they live in Surrey or Kingston Upon Thames the helpful answer is contact the Wey Valley organisers for U11's. Those two areas combine to give the Wey Valley team. Given that the County Council for Surrey are based in Kingston and certainly when I worked in Kingston, the firm I worked for included Surrey in their postal address, it is not too big a stretch just to simply think of Wey Valley as the Surrey team.

I also lived in Colliers Wood which I regarded as London - not Surrey it was an SW19 postcode in the London Borough of Merton and therefore it would seem sensible to include it in a South West London team which is Richmond, and that is where it is included.

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David Shepherd
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Re: Surrey County Junior Selectors?

Post by David Shepherd » Tue Mar 07, 2017 12:43 am

Roger de Coverly wrote:
David Shepherd wrote:As far as I am aware SCA doesn't currently run any U11 teams.
John Upham wrote:I would like to contact the official Surrey County junior (U11 and U13) selectors and don't know who they are.
That answers the original question. You cannot contact the "official Surrey County U11 junior selectors", because they don't exist.
In fact an argument could be made that the Wey Valley team is more a Surrey team than the adult team, since the adult team includes even more areas that are not strictly in the current county of Surrey. The Wey Valley team are therefore maybe the closest thing to a Surrey county team that exists at any age!

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David Shepherd
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Re: Surrey County Junior Selectors?

Post by David Shepherd » Tue Mar 07, 2017 12:55 am

However my view is, that it doesn't really matter and that the children should be allowed and encouraged to play for whichever team they want to, providing they are selected and qualify for that team. So for example they could live in the London Borough of Kingston and play at Richmond junior chess club in the London Borough of Richmond. I don't know the detailed qualifying rules for EPSCA but it would seem reasonable to let the child choose which team they want to play for.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Surrey County Junior Selectors?

Post by Roger de Coverly » Tue Mar 07, 2017 12:58 am

David Shepherd wrote: since the adult team includes even more areas that are not strictly in the current county of Surrey.
The SCCU froze the boundaries in 1974 to reflect "historic" counties. There was never an attempt to form a "Greater London" county. There had been a problem with the Richmond and Twickenham Borough as it's half Surrey and half Middlesex. That was resolved without creating a forty year legal dispute.

Whilst the 4NCL twenty years ago demonstrated that you need only to declare who you wanted to play for, turf wars on eligibility remain a junior issue.

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John Upham
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Re: Surrey County Junior Selectors?

Post by John Upham » Tue Mar 07, 2017 10:06 am

I spoke with Pat Armstrong yesterday who informed me that Wey Valley acts on behalf for the entire county of Surrey and she selects the U9 and U11 EPSCA teams with the direction of Mike Basman.

To be considered for selection for Surrey regardless of where in Surrey one lives the the child MUST enter and play in Wey Valley events organised by Pat and Mike. If you do not play in these events you cannot be considered for selection and essentially it is down to Mike to decide which U9 and U11 players represent Surrey.

That is my understanding.
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Richard James
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Re: Surrey County Junior Selectors?

Post by Richard James » Tue Mar 07, 2017 10:26 am

David Shepherd wrote:However my view is, that it doesn't really matter and that the children should be allowed and encouraged to play for whichever team they want to, providing they are selected and qualify for that team. So for example they could live in the London Borough of Kingston and play at Richmond junior chess club in the London Borough of Richmond. I don't know the detailed qualifying rules for EPSCA but it would seem reasonable to let the child choose which team they want to play for.
This is exactly what happens at the moment between Richmond and Wey Valley. Likewise, there are children who attend Richmond Junior Club and sometimes go to school in Richmond who prefer to play for Wey Valley, because they take part in their competitions on a regular basis, which, equally, is no problem for us.

Other areas, though, are not so accommodating, and insist that children play for their team rather than the team the children would prefer to represent.

Many years ago, I asked Mike Basman why his team was called Wey Valley rather than Surrey. He explained that, many years before our conversation, he had a sponsor for the Surrey primary schools teams. The Surrey Chess Association were horrified at the commercialisation of their beautiful game and expelled them from the SCA. No doubt there was another side to the story as well.