A remarkable day at the Under 11 Northern Zone County Championships yesterday at Flowery Field Primary School in Hyde
An Oldham town team played against 7 other teams (Cheshire/N Wales, Nottinghamshire, Lancashire, G.Manchester, Staffordshire, Wirral, Tameside as the hosts).
Expected to finish in bottom two with such difficult opponents, Oldham finished in an amazing 3rd place qualifying for the National County final in Warwickshire in 3 weeks’ time.
6 of the children out of the 20 strong team came from our two schools – Ethan Lancaster, Lawrence Moustafa, William Hardman-Elliott, Austin Butterworth, Lucy Lowe and Dylan Crothers.
Cheshire/N Wales won the event but William Hardman-Elliott had to win his final game (an amazing 1hr 40 mins marathon!) against a difficult Nottinghamshire team for us to take 2nd place. He lost but it was such valiant attempt.
Everyone contributed.
Ethan Lancaster incredibly won all 3 games on board 7 of 20. His maturity as a chess player continues to grow.
Lucy scored 2 out of 3.
Lawrence, Dylan and Austin scored 1.5 out of 3 (a win, a draw and a defeat).
Last word for William who may have only scored 1 out of 3 having to play Cheshire/N Wales and Nottinghamshire, had by far the hardest draw. The final, tense game was incredible and William probably played my game of the day to earn his 1 point.
We were also very lucky to have a FIDE Master in our ranks, Adam Ashton (75th best player in England) who went through some of their games with the kids afterwards.
This will be shared in special assemblies this week, each child won a certificate for representing the town team and as a player in a team in the top 3 teams were also awarded a medal. I have asked them to bring these into school.
Thanks to parents Sam Elliott and Simon Butterworth who both supported the kids on the day.