Many thanks to Angela Eyton and Barnet Junior Chess for organising a series of online inter-County events mirroring the over the board competitions run by EPSCA in normal seasons.
In normal years Sussex Junior Chess select squads to represent Sussex in the prestigious EPSCA inter-County Championships. Typically each squad will have a friendly match against 3 or 4 local Counties as a warm-up, followed by a regional ‘Zone’ where they compete against a wider range of Counties in the South East. Typically Sussex will score well enough in the Zone to progress to the National Final.
But of course this isn’t a normal year! The usual longplay format of the EPSCA championships doesn’t translate well to online chess so Barnet Junior Chess stepped in to offer an online alternative.
Todays’ match, although taken very seriously, was a practice of the new format ready for the Zones and Finals later this Spring, so unusually, all 3 squads were playing on the same day, meaning the Under 9 and Under 11 team managers lost several of their femail players to the Under 11 Girls manager!
All the teams performed very creditably in their first serious national competition this season, and the accompanying zoom call was very lively with players reporting back on their matches and bantering with each other.
Both the Under 9s and Under 11s finished comfortably mid-table. The stars of the show were the Under-11 Girls who came a resounding 1st with Sussex’s Louisa Kiss top scorer overall.
The team managers will now be looking at the games in preparation for selecting their squads for the upcoming zones.
Under 9 Championship
The Squad: Charles Adams, Arthur Ashcroft, Tofunmi Balogun, Ella Batholomew, Eliza Blin, Charlie Boxer, Aidan Burnside, Aditya Gupta, Nuvee Konara, Sienna Makolski, Smithri Manoj, Samuel Merchant, Edward Nethercot, Sidhanth Pai, Kaelen Patel, Samuel Shah, Shrey Soni, Kai Subramanian, Pranil Sugana Jaideep, Isabella Walsh, Hongqi Zhang
Under 11 Championship
The Squad: Fiyin Balogun, James Beecroft, Henri Blin, George Boxer, Luke Chapman, Nicholas Deacon, Luke Freeman, Ned Hafner, Caspar Irani, Thomas Irani, Joseph Johnson, Sebastian Kilburn, Bradley Marchant, Austin Mitchell, Cillian Nagy, Emerson Purvis, Nayan Keats Rastogi, Kaysan Salajee, Ernest Saunders, Oliver Seeds, Taran Sharma, George Tagg, Eleanor Watson, Charlie Wannasin Bell
Under 11 Girls Championship
The Squad: Jessica Appleton, Emily Ashcroft, Angharad Fraser-Jenkins, Niamh Grace, Risha Jithendra, Louisa Kiss, Seha Konara, Maddy Lowe, Lucy Magura, Marcy Page, Amelie Rees, Zeel Shah, Avyanna Singh, Ann Tagg, Natalie van Hoven, Alice Watson
