NYCA Under 14 Championships

[benedgell]

The NYCA U-14 national competition was held in the Abraham Darby Academy in Telford.

9 teams of 12 players had entered for the U14 Championship this year. Each player had to play 4 Jamboree pairing matches with 45 minutes each on the clock.
At the end of Round 1, Kent scored a solid 8 points out of 12 and was in joint second place with Berkshire, 1.5 points behind our rival Sussex, with Lancashire in fourth place on 7.5 points.

Round 2 produced a better result of 9 points, giving Kent a total of 17 points but we remained in second place behind Sussex who had secured 11 points for a total of 20.5. Berkshire fell back to third on 15 points.

Round 3 was our best performance with 9.5 points but still Sussex pulled ahead with 11.5 points secured. Their only dropped point in round 3 was the half point secured in a draw by Raphael Kalid, board 3.

Going into the final round we were in second place, 2.5 points clear of Berkshire in third but 5.5 points behind the leaders Sussex. Our only hope of victory was that Sussex may have had to get up even earlier than our players to get to Telford! As we waited for our players to emerge from the final session rumours circulated that Berkshire had had a very strong round and might even be catching Kent in second place. When our final players completed their games, Kent had scored 8.5 points in the final round, against 8 for Berkshire. The top three final positions were therefore, Sussex, first on 42.5 points, Kent second on 35 points and Berkshire third on 32 points.

Kent did not enter a team at U14 level last year so we were pleased with our performance. Sussex fielded a very strong team with average grading of 14 per player above our team’s grading. Eleven of our players are however eligible to compete at U14 level again next year, when we hope to improve on this year’s performance.

The best performance of the day was from Conor Murphy (Eltham College and Charlton CC) who received a board prize for winning his 4 games. Four other players were also unbeaten on the day: Nicholas Clanchy (Dulwich College Prep and Lewisham CC), Alexei Davis (Eltham College and Lewisham CC), Patrick Smith (The Judd School and Sevenoaks CC), and Benedict Rodrigues (Dulwich College and Lewisham CC).

The full team, managed by Angela Smith, in board order, was as follows: 1) Gautham Reddiar (St. Olave's Grammar, Orpington), 2) Nicholas Clanchy, 3) Raphael Kalid (Rosemead Prep, Dulwich), 4) Raunak Rao (St. Olave’s Grammar and Beckenham & Bromley CC), 5) Alexei Davis, 6) Conor Murphy, 7) Patrick Smith, 8) Oliver Petrick (The Judd School and Sevenoaks CC), 9) Orlando Devoy (Hampton Court House School), 10) Simon Leung (Dulwich College Prep and Dulwich CC), 11) Benedict Rodrigues and 12) Rohan Bansal (Dulwich College and Lewisham CC).
The full official Championship result was as follows: 1) Sussex 42.5pts; 2) Kent 35pts; 3) Berkshire 32pts; 4) Lancashire 30.5pts; 5) Yorkshire 18.5pts; 6) Cheshire North Wales 17.5pts; 7) South Wales 17.5pts; 8) Staffordshire 14.5pts; 9) Manchester 8pts.

This report was from Angela Smith, c/o KJCA.

[Alex Holowczak]

I think emoticons have been inserted where you should have 8 ), but without the space...

[Carl Hibbard]

I think emoticons have been inserted where you should have 8 ), but without the space...

Fixed with the "disable smilies" tick box option, although there must be a better way

[IM Jack Rudd]

A county under-14 team has a player who just got a partial FIDE rating on board 11. I'm impressed.

[Eoin Devane]

Good to see my old school (St. Olave's Grammar) is keeping up its development of good young players.

[Neill Cooper]

More detailed results at http://www.nyca.org.uk/

Berks report at http://www.bjca.org.uk/news.php?id=159
Sussex report at http://www.sussexjuniorchess.org/Result ... YCAU14.htm

[Ian Kingston]

Can anyone (Neill?) provide more information about NYCA?

[Neill Cooper]

Can anyone (Neill?) provide more information about NYCA?

I can give you very little beyond their website (which I run) -I have only been to one of their events.
I offered to run the website so that it was easier to find out about it.

If you ask a question I'll try to answer it, and it may be good for me to put that info onto the website for others

[Ian Kingston]

I'm really just interested in the aims of the organisation and what it's intended to achieve. The organisation doesn't seem to have been well publicised.

I'm also personally intrigued by the apparent ease with which teams have been attracted to play compared with the ECF's county junior team championships. Nottinghamshire's junior coaches might be interested in entering a team or teams if the dates don't clash with other events.

[Neill Cooper]

Ian. NYCA has, I think, been going for 20+ years, just running two events a year in the Autumn term. Sometimes the events are publicised on the ECF Calendar. I was pleased top be able to start the website so that events could be announced and results publicised. It would be great if Nottinghamshire wanted to enter a team or teams.

For more information please contact Kevin Staveley 01443 772 750 e-mail: [email protected]

[Ian Kingston]

Thanks. Somehow it completely failed to cross our radar at all.