On Saturday 21 March, Oxfordshire took part in the EPSCA Under 11 Southern Zonal qualifier and won medals for the first time since the 2009/10 season.
Here is what Marc Ives, the team captain (and Cumnor player) had to say about it:
The Oxfordshire U11 are extremely pleased with their performance in the Southern Zone Qualifier for the EPSCA U11 Championship in Nottingham. There were notable wins for William Daniels-Dwyer and Benjamin Poole against Sussex players, whilst Andrew Niu and Movses Shirinyan got points against Wey Valley. At the top end of the scale, just so that we know what we are up against, the Number 1 board for Wey Valley has a Rapidplay Grade of 198, and the top ranked from Sussex 153. Our boards 1,2 and 3, whose grades were 102, 102 and 104 took a lot of the pressure off those below them. The standard of chess across all our boards was very high, and it is clear that there was a great desire to win and a strong team spirit. There were also excellent results from the reserves, with Edward Wallace scoring 3 out of 3 and coming joint first in a very keenly contested competition.
It was quite a trek down to the outskirts of Brighton, but the reward of coming 3rd for the first time in years and picking up the medals for that result were well worth it. It looks as though the 39 points scored is a record for the U11’s, so a pretty high bar has been set for Nottingham on 9th May.
Full results can be found at the link below.
Link: http://oxfordfusion.com/epsca/TeamsOverall.cfm?EventID=64
