English Chess Forum

Could I ask for your experiences in setting up inter school matches with two distinct types of matches :

1. matches between private/ fee paying schools
2. matches between state schools

I suspect case 1. in easier to implement than 2.

Does anyone have a bullet list of the typical problems encountered with 2. ?

It could be a long list!

The chief problem for all school matches of any sort is travel. I taught chess at Hylton Red House in Sunderland (State Comprehensive) for some 20 years. Up till the arrival of Keith Joseph as Minister of Education I ran a (relatively) thriving schools league with many local state schools taking part. No real problems arranging matches at all. We also played against two of the Newcastle private schools (RGS and Dame Allan's) and King's, Tynemouth (In 'the Times' competition). But then came the union ban on out-of-school activities. The local league collapsed. Some of the older teachers retired and chess matches between state schools disappeared too.

Because Hylton Red House was the only school in the area to be able to give RGS a decent game (even beating them on occasion), shortly after I took early retirement I was 'head hunted' and asked to run and organise chess at RGS and I've been doing that for some 17 years now. We play relatively few school matches at secondary level nowadays - travel is the main obstacle. We've even given up playing in the ECF Schools Competition since the year we were asked to play in Belfast for our first (supposedly local) round game! We did fly down to Bristol once to play in Tony Corfe's secondary schools competition at Brean Sands, but again, this is simply too expensive to do regularly.

What has replaced school matches in this area are a number of Jamboree type competitions. Sean Marsh organised his 16th annual 'Festival' at Yarm (Teesside) recently, Syd Cassidy regularly runs one at Austin Friars (Carlisle), both, note, private schools. Tim Adams organises one at Langley School (state) in Whitley Bay. Each of these has both primary and secondary competitions and we are able to run several teams in them. In addition the RGS Junior School team plays in the EPSCA (a weekend at Prestatyn) and HMC (Coach trip to Wakefield) junior competitions. Fortunately the RGS allows me to run Jesmond Junior chess club at the school and we are able to run a junior team in the Northumberland County League. This gives our better kids a chance of match chess. And, of course, the NJCA runs regular individual tournaments throughout the season.

The system seems to work - 16 of the RGS kids appear in the ECF Grading list's 'Top 100 most improved Rapidplay' list and another 4 from that list attend Jesmond JCC. But school matches are simply not possible when the nearest schools that can give you a decent match involve journeys of over 100 miles.

My experience in trying to get state primary schools to play each other goes something like this:

School A: We'd like to play a chess match against you. Can you come round next Monday?
School B: No, we have football club so we can't possibly do Mondays. We'd love to play a match against you but you'll have to come to us on Tuesday, which is our chess night.
School A: Sorry, we can't possibly do Tuesdays. We have gym club then. You'll have to come round on Monday.

And so on, and the twain never do meet.

Richard James wrote:My experience in trying to get state primary schools to play each other goes something like this:

School A: We'd like to play a chess match against you. Can you come round next Monday?
School B: No, we have football club so we can't possibly do Mondays. We'd love to play a match against you but you'll have to come to us on Tuesday, which is our chess night.
School A: Sorry, we can't possibly do Tuesdays. We have gym club then. You'll have to come round on Monday.

And so on, and the twain never do meet.

Assuming that state schools play each other at things other than chess, how do they deal with having football (for example) nights on different days of the week?

John Upham wrote:Assuming that state schools play each other at things other than chess, how do they deal with having football (for example) nights on different days of the week?

My school played a lot of rugby. Rugby was confined to Saturday mornings, so everyone could play. Chess was on Friday evenings, when no one else could be bothered to run any clubs. Perhaps you might find joy running a match on Friday evenings and/or a Saturday morning?

Alex Holowczak wrote: Perhaps you might find joy running a match on Friday evenings and/or a Saturday morning?

Alex,

I was inclined toward Saturday mornings before I started this thread so thanks for the suggestion Alex.

Friday evenings seem unattractive for chess somehow!

John Upham wrote:

Richard James wrote:My experience in trying to get state primary schools to play each other goes something like this:

School A: We'd like to play a chess match against you. Can you come round next Monday?
School B: No, we have football club so we can't possibly do Mondays. We'd love to play a match against you but you'll have to come to us on Tuesday, which is our chess night.
School A: Sorry, we can't possibly do Tuesdays. We have gym club then. You'll have to come round on Monday.

And so on, and the twain never do meet.

Assuming that state schools play each other at things other than chess, how do they deal with having football (for example) nights on different days of the week?

I'm not sure to what extent they play each other after school. There tend to be big inter-school football and rugby competitions at weekends, which have their chess equivalents events in, for instance, the NPSCC qualifiers.

John Upham wrote: Friday evenings seem unattractive for chess somehow!

Friday was always the evening for school chess matches in my youth when many local (secondary) schools had a full fixture list against one another. The point was that you didn't have up to 2 hours of homework to have been done by the next day. Rugby and Cross-Country running were on Wednesday afternoons because that was the day for sixth form sports.

Roger de Coverly wrote:Rugby and Cross-Country running were on Wednesday afternoons because that was the day for sixth form sports.

Yes, we still had that even today!

Richard James wrote:My experience in trying to get state primary schools to play each other goes something like this:

School A: We'd like to play a chess match against you. Can you come round next Monday?
School B: No, we have football club so we can't possibly do Mondays. We'd love to play a match against you but you'll have to come to us on Tuesday, which is our chess night.
School A: Sorry, we can't possibly do Tuesdays. We have gym club then. You'll have to come round on Monday.

And so on, and the twain never do meet.

Been there, done that. Also variations such as (in the case where I do the actual coaching at both schools A and B, but most of the admin is done by a teacher):

Me to teacher at school A: You know I also coach at school B - would you like me to try and arrange a match between you?
Teacher: Ooh, that sounds like a good idea. We've got several after school clubs but we could do Wednesday or maybe Friday at a push.

Me to secretary who answers the phone at school B: can I speak to teacher X please? It's about the chess club.
Secretary: Sorry, she's busy - she'll call you back later.

Me to secretary at school B, a week or so later after they failed to get back to me: can I speak to teacher X please? It's about the chess club.
Secretary: Oh yes, she'll be with you in a minute.
Teacher X (eventually): Oh sorry, I forgot to call you back. We can't do Wednesdays but maybe Friday would be OK.


Teacher: Well this Friday wouldn't give us enough time to organise it, and next week is parents' evening. Maybe the Friday after that?

[I relay this information to teacher at school B, who then procrastinates some more until it gets to the last week of term and everyone's far too busy to think about chess]

Saturdays aren't immune from clashes either - I had three kids from one school qualify for the English Chess Challenge, and none of them could play because it was Cub camp that weekend.

It is much more easy to arrange if:
1) The head teacher supports chess
2) There is an enthusiastic teacher running it
Occasionally school chess teams work when run by a coach or enthusiastic parent, but not often.

It is different at primary than secondary school. Surrey has three successful inter-school chess leagues: Wey Valley (U11, after school), CCF Champions League (primary,Saturday afternoons) and Briant Poulter (Secondary, Friday after school). Then there is also national schools and EPSCA team events

Setting up an individual match is more difficult. A key start point, if possible, is 'what days can you play after school'. I've had an email like that this week and hopefully a school will be able it play its first chess match in years.

Email has made communication with teachers much easier - I do not like receiving phone calls during the school day. I'm normally teaching, running a club, talking with a pupil or doing preparation for a lesson.

One thing that's changed a lot, at least in my part of the world, is the proliferation of other outside school clubs. Round here, football clubs meet on Saturdays and rugby clubs on Sundays, and the children who play in the school chess club usually belong to football and rugby clubs as well.

So you go into a primary school chess club with a pile of leaflets for your LJCC qualifier and ask who'd like to play in a chess tournament. They all raise their hands excitedly, but when you tell them it's on a Saturday/Sunday they tell you they can't possibly play because of their football/rugby club. "Can't you miss just one week for a chess tournament?", I ask them. "No", they reply. "If we miss one week of training we don't get picked for the matches."

A few years ago the lower half of Richmond Junior Club met on Saturday mornings and would attract 40-50 kids. But the numbers declined so much, mainly because of football clubs, that we had to stop running it and just run an afternoon session.

Richard James wrote:One thing that's changed a lot, at least in my part of the world, is the proliferation of other outside school clubs. Round here, football clubs meet on Saturdays and rugby clubs on Sundays, and the children who play in the school chess club usually belong to football and rugby clubs as well.

So you go into a primary school chess club with a pile of leaflets for your LJCC qualifier and ask who'd like to play in a chess tournament. They all raise their hands excitedly, but when you tell them it's on a Saturday/Sunday they tell you they can't possibly play because of their football/rugby club. "Can't you miss just one week for a chess tournament?", I ask them. "No", they reply. "If we miss one week of training we don't get picked for the matches."

A few years ago the lower half of Richmond Junior Club met on Saturday mornings and would attract 40-50 kids. But the numbers declined so much, mainly because of football clubs, that we had to stop running it and just run an afternoon session.

There are very few chess-players for whom chess is their primary extra-curricular activity. We used to have to work around rugby, football, cricket, choir, drama, athletics, music... Being a mixed school, you also had to worry about netball, rounders, hockey...

I remember when rugby practice would clash with a chess match, both for the school. Knowing of the clash, I asked if the member of staff if it was OK for him to miss the practice given he was needed for a chess match. After all, we only have a few matches, and rugby goes on all winter. I would say the member of staff was uncooperative, but that would be to understate the situation. The arguments were "it's his choice" - I agree - but then, "it's an important stage for him, because he's just learning how to <generic rugby skill>, so needs to come to practice." Their regular player in that position was going to have to miss a match, I remember, and he was about to start a game for them in the new position. To be honest, I don't think the member of staff could care less about our chess match. As for the degree of "choice" there was in the matter... Despite being relatively good, he doesn't play chess anymore. Not sure whether he plays rugby, but I bet he probably does.

Rugby benefited from enthusiastic members of staff running it, whereas chess was burdened with me. Far easier to say no to me than a member of school staff!

When I was at secondary school, band practice was on Thursdays (every week), and so were chess matches (four or five per year). On one occasion a chess match happened to fall two weeks before a concert, and the music teacher went absolutely ballistic when I requested permission to miss the rehearsal; it took a great deal of persuasion from the chess teacher to convince him that my presence in the chess team (in which I played top board) was more important than in the band (in which I played a fairly inconsequential second horn).

Neill Cooper wrote:Email has made communication with teachers much easier - I do not like receiving phone calls during the school day. I'm normally teaching, running a club, talking with a pupil or doing preparation for a lesson.

I wish it always worked like that - I've often found that schools take ages to get round to answering emails (if they do at all) so phoning is the only way to get a reasonably quick response.