Billingham South School Championship

Billingham South Primary School has been with CSC since the start, all the way from September 2010 to the present day.

Chris Swales took over as our CSC Teesside tutor there last September, to continue the excellent work done by Richard Harris, who retired in 2023.

The school's chess sessions have now come to end for the year and a big tournament provided a fine finale.

Here is a report on the event, from the school.

The Billingham South School Championship was played on Monday with a fantastic 71 children in total from Year 3 to Year 6 entering the competition.

Mr. Swales said, “The competition was played in a good spirit and there was a lot of sportsmanship and resilience on show. My favourite part of this event was to see how well the older and younger children got on together when they played against each other in matches.”

Mrs. Wallace - chess coordinator for Billingham South - said, “It was great to see the focus and concentration from the children, they all had a blast!”

A Year 5 boy was the overall champion with 5/5 and a Year 3 girl played exceptionally well against several older children to be the overall Runner Up and Girls Champion with 4.5/5.

Well done, everyone!

Here is a gallery from the event.

 

CSC Training Day Tour 2023-24: Lincoln

Saturday brought the last date of my own 2023-24 CSC Training Day Tour (although there is one more training day in Oxford this Thursday, to be delivered by Matt Piper).

The finale took place in Lincoln, although thanks to the weirdness of the trains (including a particularly unhelpful cancellation), I got to spend time in Doncaster and Scunthorpe too.

It was a real treat to be reunited with the one and only Jo Hutchinson, something which doesn't happen often enough.

Jo is, amongst many other things, the CSC Regional Organiser for Lincolnshire.

Jo worked extremely hard to secure an excellent venue at the Lindum Business Park but also managed to find the vast majority of the delegates all by herself.

This was our very first training day in Lincoln, although we did come very close to having one there twice before, only to be thwarted first by COVID and then by a series of train strikes.

The delegates, who included several very strong players, worked very hard for us all day long and some are definitely interested in taking things further with CSC.

Thank you, everyone, for such an excellent day.

We conclude with a gallery showing many captured moments from the tour's finale.

12th CSC Teesside Team Tournament: Hartlepool and Stockton Borough Event

The third and final CSC Teesside Borough Tournament took place at Throston Primary School and was another great success.

Throston have been with CSC since the very start, back in September 2010. They hosted the CSC Tournament once before, in 2014, and we thought it would be an excellent idea to mark the 10 years since that particular occasion with a return to one of our most supportive of all schools.

Throston, four-time winners of the event, started as one of the favourites to win again but the competition was very tough and points had to be earned the hard way.

Holy Trinity, with a strong and experienced team, were robbed of a potential success by taxi problems (a recurring theme at our events, unfortunately). They were replaced by a hastily-assembled Throston B Team.

The line up was completed by Hardwick Green, Mill Lane and Preston, making it an excellent selection of schools for the season finale.

After the first of the two rounds, Throston A and Preston were level at the top, with Hardwick Green just half a point behind.

Preston increased their efforts again in the second round and managed four wins from four games, a pace the other teams simply could not match.

Here are the final scores.

1st 7.5/8: Preston

2nd 6/8: Hardwick Green

3rd 5.5/8: Throston A

4th 1/8 Mill Lane

5th: 0/8: Throston B

This year's experiment of splitting our annual tournament into three events worked very well and we attracted entries from considerably more schools than normal. It has also given us three brand new champions on our famous roll of honour, which is presented below the gallery.

Thank you, Throston, for acting as such magnificent hosts and for all of your ongoing years of very strong support.

Roll of Honour

2011: Ings Farm and Throston

2012: Ings Farm and Billingham South

2013: Throston

2014: Errington

2015: Throston

2016: Sacred Heart

2017: Westgarth

2018: Westgarth

2019: Westgarth and Billingham South

2022: Fairfield and Throston

2023: Fairfield

2024: Wheatlands, Hemlington Hall and Preston

That concludes the CSC Teesside tournaments for 2023-24!