NYCA U13/U18 Championships: 25th September 2005, Arden School, Knowle

Sussex put out a very strong side for the Under 13 championships in Solihull, hoping to retain the title they shared with Kent last year. Both counties got off to a great start in Round one, with neither losing a match, but Kent managed to an extra win to take a half point lead.

Round 2 was just as close, but Kent gained another half point, the team was showing great resolve, however, with the majority winning comfortably and there was a clear gap of 4 points to the rest of the field.

Round 3 proved to be the low point with 3 straight losses, although we still scored 9 points. Kent managed to extend their lead by another half point, but left it all to play for in the final round, especially if we could win the head to head game against them.

There was a fantastic last round push with 9 players reporting wins in quick succession. Unfortunately things weren’t looking so good on the final 3 boards. Two draws were taken leaving the head-to-head game as the decider for the championship. However in dramatic circumstances, with his clock running low on time, the Kent player managed to pull off the win to give them the trophy.

Sussex finished on 39 points just one behind Kent but 7.5 points clear of the rest to take a well-deserved second place. Well done to George Salimbeni, Jude Lenier and Joseph Quinn who scored maximum points, and David Grant, Alex Galliano, Oskar Schortz and Sam Amis who only dropped half a point. The rest of the team played very well and never stopped trying, a gallant effort and a great team spirit.

Congratulations to Kent for a very strong performance.

The Under 18’s was an even closer affair with 5 teams in contention for the title. Our performance in the first 2 rounds was patchy only gaining 9.5 points out of 16 but no team had performed particularly well so we were only 1.5 points behind.

Round 3 was particularly pleasing with 6 wins and 2 draws. This took us into joint first place with last years winners, Norfolk, and establishing a gap over the other counties.

We played very well in round 4 with only 1 match lost and one drawn, with 5 games won it looked like we may have done enough to win it.

The key match was on board 2 with Joe Fraser playing Chris Russell, Joe managed to fight back from being a piece down to claim a draw. At that stage there were still 3 Norfolk games going and they could only drop half a point. However they won 2 of the matches and their board one agreed a draw with his opponent, so it was all over, Norfolk had won by half a point, the tightest of margins.

Well done to Grant Bucher for his maximum 4 points and to Joe Fraser and Joe Richardson , who only dropped half, another gallant effort by the whole team.

The most encouraging aspect of the day was that we scored the most points over the two competitions, so although we didn’t win a title we can still look on the day as a very strong performance from all the Sussex players.