U11 Chess team National Champions

Back row, from left:   Rohan Rao, Arul Gupta, Alex Selway, Owen Messere
Front row, from left:  Thomas Morton, Conor Murphy

The Eltham College Under 11 Chess Players are the best in the country, and that's official.  At the EPSCA National U11 tournament on 6th-7th July they won convincingly and are worthy national champions.  

Five of the squad had played last year and we had come second, so the feeling was that the team had a good chance of lifting the National trophy.   The team breezed through their zonal some months ago and at the strong semi-final at Camber Sands last week scored an incredible 28/30 to qualify for the finals.  The final was held over two days, with 4 rounds being played on day 1 and three rounds on day 2.   The team got off to a great start on day 1 with 4 wins. Particularly important was the emphatic 4-1 demolition of "second favourites" Nottingham. We scored 16,5/20 on day 1, a very good start.  

Day 2 started with a small "stumble" (only 3,5 pts!) followed by another emphatic 4-1 win against a near rival. Going into the last round the team had  a 4-point lead and cruised through 3-2 to finish with 27 points.        The team: Conor Murphy, Owen Messere, Alexander Selway, Arul Gupta, Thomas Morton and Rohan Rao played superbly throughout the tournament and won with a staggeringly high percentage.  Particular mention must be made of Conor Murphy (on Board 1) and Arul Gupta (only 8, on Board 4) who won special board prizes for scoring 7/7. Fantastic. This team did their school proud.   Many thanks  to the parents for their support and assistance throughout the competition              Arul Gupta and Conor Murphy
and of course to Coach Laurence Ball.