Our Chess teams march on

An end of year report from our coach, Tony Niccoli

“I would like to take this opportunity to give you a report on how the chess at Manor Lodge has gone this year.

We have had consistent numbers in the 3 chess clubs with a total of nearly 60 members. This is a very healthy number and it is likely to grow by around 10 next year. This is excellent news. I am looking at ways of expanding the clubs to make the groups smaller with a likely ‘breakfast’ club as the best option.

Manor Lodge chess club has incredibly managed to put out over 30 players to represent the school in external chess competitions on both an individual and team basis. We have had great success.

Zachary Greenberg and Carl Breindel have played at county level with Carl captaining Hertfordshire at the Under 9 level. Carl Breindel is also the official Hertfordshire Under 9 champion winning all his games and scoring a perfect 6/6 in the individual tournament. Carl, Mathew Gittleson and James Davis are through to the third round of the UK chess challenge which takes place later in July. We wish them great success.

The Manor Lodge School team placed first in the Herts Inter Schools’ chess league plate competition bringing home a trophy. I believe this is the first time they have done so. At the Lochniver House Schools’ competition our very young Under 11 team came an impressive second.

The biggest team competition of the year has undoubtedly been the ‘Pontins’ one. We played back in February in order to try to qualify. We managed to field one team in the Under 11 section and no less than 3 teams in the Under 9 section enabling the younger players to get valuable experience for next year. We were delighted to see both an Under 11 and an Under 9 team progress into the next round.

It was with great pleasure that I accompanied the teams on 26 and 27 June to Pontins. We once again managed to field an extra team into the plate competition meaning a total of 18 children and their families travelled down to Camber Sands for the weekend to face opposition from all over England. All 3 teams did extremely well, performing way above our expectations.

The Under 11 team finished on 11.5 points. The Under 9 plate team played 15 games, winning 13 and drawing 2 and became the plate champions in the process. The trophy for this is displayed on the Reception Desk in the front hall at School.

The Under 9 main team reached a remarkable 3rd place and missed out on qualifying for the national finals by half a point from 30 games! It is worth noting we came second bottom in our semi final from 30 teams in the same competition last year.

This Under 9 result ranks them a very impressive 9th best team in that age group in the whole country from the 240 teams that took part! Annoyingly only the top 8 qualified for the finals to decide who would finish top so we just missed out.

It was also great to see the Manor Lodge parents arranging a barbecue and get together on the Saturday night after we all returned from the beach.”

As well as an exciting competition, all involved had a great time as well