NEWS
Chess champions in the making
By Mr Hills, 13 January 2020
On Sunday 12 January 2020, seven girls represented the Abbey in the U’19 Southern semi-final of the National Chess Championships for Girls held at St. Catherine’s School in Bramley. Last year, the organiser announced that it was the largest chess event for girls anywhere in the world. This year, even more teams entered!
The Abbey entered two teams in the U’19 section of the Championships and there were also two teams in the U’II section. In the U’19 section Helen, Kathryn and Shree were in the A team and Jigya, Prisha, Akshita and Radha were in the B team.
The A team had good wins against Haberdashers’ Aske’s D and St Catherine’s A and drew with Chelmsford High School. The B team won against St Catherine’s B team and had close games against North London Collegiate D and Stroud High School. Kathryn won 4 of her matches and Helen and Shree each won 3.
When the results were announced at the end of the day, our A team came 7th out of the 28 teams in the U’19 section and so have qualified for the National Finals in April. An Abbey team has now qualified for the U’19 Finals in 5 of the last 6 years which is a great achievement. It was also announced that many teams entered into the U’11 section had participants under nine, so a new section was created. One of our Junior School teams came third in this new category. All the girls can feel very proud of their performances as they were playing against the best girls’ schools for chess in the South of England and Wales.
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