The Newington College Chess season to date has seen real progress, both in terms of the development of the playing group and the school’s performances in tournaments. There has also been a significant increase in the number of players both socially and in representative teams.

The Chess Club in 2012

The Newington College Chess club meets every Tuesday and Thursday during lunch throughout the year. Whilst largely social in nature it is often the beginning stage for students who wish to develop their playing skills.

Tuition from professional staff is available to all students from 7.30am Mondays till 8.20am or on Fridays from 3.30pm. This is much more formal in nature and students attending these sessions are required to solve problems, play ranking matches and participate in lectures on strategy and tactics.

Students wishing to play representative matches for the school in an A or B teams are required to attend at least one session per cycle.

Representative Fixtures in 2012:

Inter-School Chess Championships:

These matches are arranged through the NSW Junior Chess league and are organised into regions, grade and divisions.

Newington College had seven teams competing this year in the Met-East Region, this region has some of the best performed schools in chess in the state. The College fielded three junior teams (Years 7 & 8), two intermediate teams ( Years 9 & 10) and two senior teams ( Years 11 & 12).

In the senior grade, our teams were in two different divisions with the A team finishing 2nd and the B team finishing 5th .

In the Intermediate grade, we saw the same results with the A team finishing 2nd and the B team finishing 5th. The difference in this grade was that the Intermediate A Team qualified for the divisional finals. In their first match against Scots the team won 3 -1 and played in the semi-finals against Sydney Grammar which was drawn 2 all. The final game will be played on Friday 10 August.

In the junior grade, we had success in two divisions, with both A and B teams winning their respective divisions and thereby winning the Divisional Championship. The C team played marvellously all season to finish 4th, only 6.5 pts behind the Divisional Champions over 7 rounds. Unfortunately both juniors lost their quarter final matches in the Regional Finals.

All competitors were very committed and played with great concentration, it is a credit to all the students that participated and the College is grateful for their dedication to an activity that is purely voluntary.

Terry Shaw Shield:

Over many years the College has sent teams during the Winter holidays to compete in this one-day event. This year saw a large number of Newington students attending with 12 students from all years.

The format is a team’s event with two divisions: Junior (Years 7 to 9) and Open.

The open teams competed well finishing in solid positions (top ten) in a field of over 20 schools. Similarly, the Junior teams had well placed finishes (best two teams, result in top ten) in a field of nearly 30 schools. These were reasonable results given that many of our representative players had other College commitments during this time and could not attend.

Inaugural Inner-West Schools Challenge:

Newington College hosted the inaugural Inner-West School’s Chess Challenge. This was a Swiss Tournament in two divisions: Primary and Secondary. There were five schools competing in the Primary division and three schools in the Secondary division. A total of 70 students competed.

We saw Nick Sharp (8/JN) and William Tao (8/KL) (pictured above) finish first and second in the Secondary division respectively. Adrian Lo (4/Wyvern) finished third in the Primary division. The Stanmore campus finished first in the Secondary schools competition and Wyvern finished second in the Primary division.

The event was a great success and we look forward to the Regional finals, when we will play against the winning teams from the other regions.

Much thanks to Dr Andrew Hirst, for welcoming the schools to the school and Mr Marcel Hennes for his support for the competition. Much thanks also to Ms Veronique Lorquet, Ms Bea Standen, Mr Lindsay Raven, Ms Elaine O’Rourke and Mr Neil Wright for their invaluable assistance in organising the event.

 Graeme Downward
MiC of Chess