NYCA U13 Championships: 25th September 2004, Solihull

On Saturday, Sussex dispatched its latest U13 team to Solihull to take part in the national U13 Championships, hoping to retain the title which we won last year. The 12 man (sorry, Elizabeth! person) squad, captained by Tristan Blundell needed to play 5 rounds in a team Swiss tournament.

After the first round, Sussex and Kent took the lead, and in the second round, Sussex soundly beat Kent 7.5 to 4.5 to take a two point advantage over our nearest rivals. However, after a tough round against Devon, we had fallen into second place, narrowly behind Kent. A strong 4th round against Hertfordshire left us half a point ahead of Kent, with one round to play, and no other teams in contention.

Imagine our dismay, therefore, when we found ourselves drawn against arch rivals Richmond in the final round, with Kent drawn against Lancashire! The team put up a strong fight against Richmond, winning 8 games to 12; Our initial fear (based on reports from Kent) was that we had narrowly missed out on the title. However on the final scorecards, Sussex and Kent were drawn in first place on 42 points, a clear 10 points ahead of third place Yorkshire and Norfolk.

Particular mentions go to Tristan Blundell, who finished on 2.5 with some strong performances on board 1; Chris Linnett who was undefeated on 3.5 points on board 3, and Rhys Cumming, George Salimbeni and Nick Fraser who each scored 5 out of 5 on boards 5, 7 and 8 respectively.