News from 2005-06 for Oxfordshire Chess

National Successes for Oxfordshire Juniors

Several Oxfordshire juniors have placed highly in national rapidplay championships over the last couple of months. The most recent event was the UK Chess Challenge Southern Gigafinal on the 15th-16th July. The Oxon champions from the Saturday were Anna Wang (U7G), Maria Wang (U10G) and Marcus Harvey (U10BA) and on the Sunday: Naomi Miller (U16G) and Claire Morris (U18G) (listed as Berks in the official results due to the old County boundaries used in the competition)

On the 24th of June, Rowan White (U8) and Anna Wang (U7) were age-group champions in the ECF All-England Girls Gold Finals and on the 10th of June, the Cowley U9 team of Sarah Garrett, Anna Wang, Rowan White and Chantelle Foster finished seven points clear of 19 other teams to win the ECF National Girls Team Championships.

Here are the results of the winners and the other Oxon medallists in these events.

In August, several of these players will be competing at longplay time controls in the British Championships in Swansea.

And in September, Marcus Harvey (U10B) and Maria Wang (U10G) have been invited to represent England in the European Youth Championships - the most prestigious youth event that the ECF are sending a squad to this year.

EPSCA National Primary Schools Finals - U9

The Oxford High School U9 team finished 2nd in the National Primary Schools Under 9 Finals at Pontin's last week. Ten teams from the 170 that had originally entered took part in an all-play-all. It all ended up being very close between three outstanding teams at the top of the competition.

Hulme Court (Oldham) finished first, just a single point ahead of OHS, and Homefield (Surrey) were 3rd - one point further back. The key moment came on the morning of the second day, when a long match (eventually drawn) vs overnight leaders Hulme Court was immediately followed by a 4.5-0.5 loss to Homefield. However, the team rallied superbly to win their last two matches 4-1 and 5-0, and regain the second position they'd held overnight.

So well done to the very young team of Sarah Garrett, Rowan White, Anna Wang, Alex Anderton, Irene Mathias and Daniel D'Souza-Eva. These six County players have an average age-group of under 7.5, and four of them will still be able to take part in the 2008 version of the same event! Top performers were Sarah, who scored 5/9 on board 1 and played many good games against some of the best under 9s in the country and Anna, who was the team's top scorer with 7.5/9 on board 3.