Chess Scotland
Juniors
designed by kids,
for kids!
Over 30 members of
the Youth Squad met at the Prudential buildings in Stirling
on the 10th of June for the second training day of the
season. The coaches present were:
Stephen Mannion, Craig Pritchett, Neil Berry and Tom Donohue.
The day started
with participation certificates being given out to the players as follows: Quadrangular Tournament – Liverpool December 2005
U14
Ian McGregor, Amy
Officer, Adam Bremner, Matthew O’Donnell, Jonathan
Edwards, Jamie Hookham, Craig Petrie, Callum Vipond, David Nisbet, Daniel MacAteer, Joe Pedrosa, Angus
Taylor
U12
Rhian
Hughes, Jonathan Wright, Stuart MacQueen, Ali Roy,
Barnaby Leach, Andrew McClement, Kirill Mikhaylov, Jonny Scott, Marc Woods, Bryan Rettie,
Jamie Scott, Scott Jordan
European Team Championships
– Hungary
July 2006
Andrew
Green, Ivan Stokes, Calum MacQueen, Robbie Coleman.
Amy
Officer, Rhian Hughes.
World Olympiad – Italy May/June 2006
Amy Officer, Rhian
Hughes
The selections for
the various internationals were announced (see home page). Well done to all those selected!
Neil then allocated
everyone to a group and the coaching sessions began. After a period of time the groups swapped
coaches until lunch time. It was
difficult to motivate the players after lunch time as the England v Paraguay football game was about
to start!! There a wide screen plasma
TV in the room but John had decided that he would rather we didn’t use
them. However, certain individuals had
other ideas and as soon as John turned around to do his work the screen
miraculously flashed on! I felt rather
sorry for Craig trying to coach a group interrupted periodically by shouts of
“Get intae him!!” or “GOAL!!!”, still I caught him
having sneaky glances now and again too.
Once the coaching
sessions (and football!) had finished, everyone voted to have a blitz
tournament. I quickly did the pairings
on the computer after convincing the coaches and John Glendinning that they
really needed to play. The first
couple of rounds were interesting – all of the coaches were beaten at some
stage leaving the players leading the field!
The final outcome was a tie between Ivan and Andrew and both received
a – very expensive – packet of sweeties split between them!
A very touching
moment during the training day was when Lynsey stood up to present Amy with a
card signed by all the coaches and
players congratulating her on achieving a WFM title at the Turin
Olympiad. I had been given the dubious
task of obtaining all the signatures surreptitiously during the course of the
afternoon.
All
too soon the day was over and the parents started arriving to pick up the
players. Many thanks to John
Glendinning for organising the venue and collecting the sets and boards. Thanks to the coaches for a very
interesting and informative day and thanks to the players for being their
usual lively and em………just thanks for coming!!
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