England Youth Teams

[Neill Cooper]

I hear of England U12, U14 or similar teams which occasionally play other European countries. For players aged over 11:
What teams are there? How often do they play?
Are these official ECF teams?
What do players need to do to be considered for these teams?

Also how can I find out more about NCJS (National Chess Junior Squad)? (They are not listed on the ECF website under Clubs Etc)

[Paul Stimpson]

Neil,

There is a whole raft of information at junior level that seems to be almost impossible to get hold of. I sometimes wonder if it's covered by the official secrets act or something!

[John Upham]

Across the whole country there are many little islands of excellence for junior chess.

Volunteers gladly beaver away without renumeration. Many varied resources exist both on-line and in traditional forms. Great little (and large) tournaments are run and there is much enthusiasm. Children and their parents are happy and hopefully their schools see benefits also.

At least one major question remains in my mind : Do these many and varied activities and organisers want to be coordinated?

Would coordinating bring any benefits?
Would there be endless arguments about how best to do things?
Would it all end in tears?

One thing that must be useful would be a nationally coordinated on-line resource for junior chess in England.
Does such a thing exist?
The ECF calendar contains a sub-set of all events : I wonder how many exist that are not listed?

[Paul Stimpson]

One thing that must be useful would be a nationally coordinated on-line resource for junior chess in England.
Does such a thing exist?

John, you are absolutely right in what you say.

Isn't this something the ECF should do? A central site with lots of information would be great. Claire started this but it needs to bring everything together.

Different areas within the ECF could cover this, for instance if all events were ECF graded then couldn't this information be used for crosstables? They do it abroad!

[Neill Cooper]

Neville Belinfante used to run a webiste for results and reports of team trips - see here

This is no longer active but he and Marc Shaw have reported NCJS and similar results in this forum - see here

What I have not seen is any recent report of U12/U14 team trips. Indeed I do not even know what teams we have.

I do not think that those running "many little islands of excellence for junior chess" want to be nationally co-ordinated (I certainly don't!). Though knowing dates to avoid clashes - such as NYCA with the National Junior Rapidplay this coming Saturday, and 4NCL Junior with the ECF U18 county championship in February - would be good. But it would be nice if there was clear information about any national teams that our youth could (and do) play for.

If all that is needed is for someone to offer to run a website for the NCJS then I will happily do that - as I have done for the NYCA

[John Upham]

Almost anything is possible technically. Our requirements are a mere trifle compared with leading edge solutions : whatever we want could be achieved.

The barriers here are not technical : they are mind-set barriers.

One thing I've wanted to do for some time is to drastically reduce the granularity of any information that has a geographic or temporal time tag. For example, when I returned to chess, I decided to simulate ignorance and assume the only source of club information was the ECF : not unreasonable I would hope. (When I went through this process in 1974 I went to my local library and spoke to people.)

I rang the office to seek my nearest club. The only location reference that was of interest was the county of my postal address.
This was Hampshire. I was given details of clubs in Portsmouth. I live in Farnborough, North East Hampshire. My nearest club is in Camberley, Surrey. My post code starts GU14 which is not that close to Portsmouth.

Knowing the post codes of clubs (and other resources) and the post code of information seeker allows a trivial distance calculation by triangulation. I wanted to set-up a club finder for the ECF site. A prerequisite for all this would be knowledge of the post code (or Lat Long data) for each resource. I would urge each and every club to determine this for their clubs venue (and NOT for the current location of the current secretary). This information should then be added to Google Maps as in this example :

(apologies for the long URI which might get truncated)

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&q=c ... 9GlAg&cd=1

If each club did this I could then build a national club look-up service.

Just an idea.

[IM Jack Rudd]

Good idea, John.

Barnstaple's is EX32 8BA.

Yeovil's is BA20 2BE.

[Michele Clack]

Neill,the information you want does appear to be on the ECF website. Click on the logo on the right hand side of the homepage that says Junior Chess. Do not be put off by the bit at the bottom of the logo that says ECF coaching website. This logo leads you to the junior section that includes junior international selection plus a lot of other junior stuff including coaching.

Peter Purland is the Director of Junior Chess and Education for the ECF and his contact details are given. The National Chess Junior Squad also get a mention as a non ecf organisation of interest and it says that Peter Purland is the chairman of that body. It seems that he is the man you need to talk to.

Hope this helps

Michele

[John Upham]

Good idea, John.

Barnstaple's is EX32 8BA.

Yeovil's is BA20 2BE.

OK, now what needs to happen is someone from that club registers with Google and creates an entry for their club such as the one I did for Camberley.

The process takes a few weeks as Google send a post-card(! how quaint and ironic) and you then enter the code to a URI. The entry then appears on Google Maps. I can then use that entry to do a least distance calculaltion.

[Michele Clack]

Neill, the November issue of the Right Move has just come through. If you haven't seen it yet look on page 10. There is information about a selection tournament for the National Junior Squad on Sat 29th November plus Sunday 30th for the over 11's. This tournament is not mentioned on the ECF calender.

[Neill Cooper]

And on page 2 of Right move http://www.bcf.org.uk/private/rightmove ... /11-08.pdf there is a report on this year's National Chess Junior Squad U11 team visit to Flanders.

ps The British Rapidplay at Halifax is on the ECF Calendar, but there is no mention of the Junior Squad.