Showing posts with label SA schools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SA schools. Show all posts

Tuesday 25 July 2017

SA Schools Winter Games

The South African Schools Championships took place in Durban for the second year in a row. The Winter Games is an event organised annually by the Departments of Sport and Recreation, together with Basic Education. There were over 2 000 participants from all over South Africa, taking part in sports such as soccer, rugby and volleyball, as well as the more intellectual game of chess.

Play commenced at Brettenwood High School on Monday 10th July and finished after 7 rounds of hard fought chess on Thursday 13th July 2017. Here is what the school hall looked like at the start of play on Monday, and when the hall was set up for the prizegiving:



There were no under 13 chess players this time, which reduced the numbers to 252 players. Each province had a team of 28 players, split equally between the under 15 and under 18 age groups, with separate boys and girls teams. Only the top 6 scores were added together to get the team rankings. The top seeded teams in each group were Gauteng and Western Cape. These two teams dominated the field, with Western Cape eventually taking all the team gold medals, and Gauteng all the team silver medals. Here is a photo of the gold medal winning squad from Western Province:


The contest for the bronze medals was extremely close, with Mpumalanga (u15 boys), Eastern Cape (u15 girls), Free State (u18 boys) and KwaZulu-Natal (u18 girls) all taking home medals. Possibly the most under-rated team was that from Mpumalanga, who won more than their share of medals in the rating categories. Team KZN were close to the medals in all age groups and can be pleased with their overall result:


Results were published daily on chess-results.com so I have only given the team rankings below:
under 15 boysunder 15 girlsunder 18 boys, and under 18 boys.

Thanks to Leon de Jager for supplying all the photos, and to all the organising team who helped make this event a success.



Friday 15 July 2016

SA Schools Winter Games

Chess was one of the 9 sporting codes that took part in the "South African Schools National Winter Games Championships 2016" in Durban in July 2016. The other sporting codes were football, hockey, jukskei, kho-kho, netball, rugby, tennis and volleyball.

Chess was played from the 10th to 14th July at Glenwood High School. There were 9 provincial teams of 7 players in each of 6 age group sections i.e. a total of 378 chess players for all these groups. There were even larger numbers in other sporting codes. I have seen reports of 7 500 competitors, so this was a massive sporting event!

I thought that Ronald King did a great job as chief arbiter. The organising committee asked that the event be played as a combined team and individual event. For the first 5 rounds, the tournament was paired as a normal Swiss. Then for the last 4 rounds, players were not allowed to play against their team mates, as the organisers wanted to establish which province had the best team. They also wanted to know who were the best individual players. I didn't know that Swiss Manager could do this, but Ronald somehow managed the task after spending many hours on his computer!

For those interested in the results, here is a link to the final results of the under 13 boys section. From there you can browse to all the other age group results.

I was present at the chess as a talent scout, for the under 13 boys and girls. Originally there were supposed to have been 2 talent scouts, and it would have been a lot easier to pick 3 boys and 3 girls, rather than 5 of each, on my own. I was given until Wednesday afternoon to finalise my reports, which meant that I only had games from the first 6 rounds to consider. Talent identification is as much about future potential as it is about present ability, so I must now wait 3 years to see if I was any good at talent spotting!

The following tactical episode deserves its own diagram:

Fihla vs Mazibuko, round 3, under 13 boys
In this position Black could try 27... Rc8 28.Re1 Qc2 keeping everything under control, instead he played the tempting 27... Nc3 forking Queen and Rook. Imagine his shock when White replied with 28.Rxd6! Both major piece are untouchable because of the back row mate, so play continued 28... Ra8 29.Qc1 and now the incredible 29... Qxe3!! really impressed me. Since 30.Qxe3 Ra1+ results in mate, the game went 30.fxe3 Ne2+ 31.Kf2 Nxc1 and Black has regained the piece, as well as keeping his extra pawn. Unfortunately he blundered on move 40 and eventually lost the game.

PS. Here is my annotated games file (PGN, 87 games) from rounds 1 to 6 of the under 13 boys and girls sections, which has the games that were considered in talent identification.

Friday 12 February 2016

iLembe's golden girls

As previously reported, the under 15 girls team from Khayalemfundo School in Mandeni were crowned as Top Schools chess champions in Pretoria in December 2015.

Their story has now been published in the Stanger Weekly newspaper of 10th February 2016: "On Friday (5th February 2016), officials of the iLembe Department of Education, KwaZulu-Natal Chess Association and the Department of Sport and Recreation paid an unannounced visit to the school to congratulate the pupils on their outstanding achievement."



 President of KwaZulu-Natal Chess Association, Sandile Xulu, heaped praise upon the school chess coach, Siyabonga Gumede, and the girls on their outstanding feat. He also presented each of the seven girls with a chess set and a chess clock. Click on this link for the full article on news24.

Tuesday 19 January 2016

December events

My apologies for not posting any chess news in December. I was taking a break for medical reasons and will now try and catch up with recent events. In the week ending 15th December 2015, KZN sent four teams to the SA Top Schools championships held in Pretoria. Our under 15 girls team from Khayalemfundo Primary school in the Ilembe district won a gold medal:


In the same week, the SALGA games for KZN were being held in  KwaDukuza (Stanger). Chess formed part of the SALGA games for the first time. Ethekwini were declared the best performing district after all the completed under 14 and under 20 results were combined (only 7 rounds of the round-robin sections were played). Unfortunately, I have not received any photos or the detailed results from this event.

This was followed on 20th December by the 7th JZ Chess Open, which took place in President Zuma's home town of Nkandla. The winners of the junior Team event (after 5 rounds) were Amajuba district. The winner of the Open section was Wanda Khanyile, on tie-break ahead of Khetha Mngadi and David Khondowe:
Thato Moremi, David Khondowe, Wanda Khanyile and Keith Khumalo
Last but not least, the African Youth chess championships took place in Lusaka, Zambia, from 6th to 12th December. Durban's Divesh Sookdeo was there as the SA team manager and his report can be found in article 448 on the Chess SA website. Five players from KZN were selected to play for South Africa, namely Karmishta Moodley, Naseem Essa, Keyana Padayachee, Kenyon Padayachee and Shivar Gopaulsingh. Congratulations go to Naseem Essa for his gold medal in the open under 12 division, which brings with it the title of FIDE Master. (At the time of writing, this event had not been rated by FIDE and so his title has not yet been updated). Also successful were Karmishta Moodley (silver medal, girls under 12) and Keyana Padayachee (silver medal, girls under 16).

Sunday 13 September 2015

KZN Top Schools results

The 2015 KZN Top Schools Team Championship was held at the Old Mutual Sports Centre (UKZN) in Durban, from Saturday 12th to Sunday 13th September 2015. Thank you to the Department of Sport & Recreation for sponsoring such a successful event.

Some photos from the team championships follow:






Here are the results and the winners for the following sections:
under 13 girls - Ilembe;
under 13 open - Ilembe;
under 15 girls - Ilembe;
under 15 open - Pinetown;
under 18 girls - Ilembe;
under 18 open - Umlazi.

Saturday 12 July 2014

A plethora of medals!

The KZN team at the SA Schools championships held in Bloemfontein from 10th to 12th July 2014 brought home a plethora of medals! Here is a list of our proud medallists:




Full list of top ten places:

u09 girls
1st Aarti Datharam
2nd Diya Datharam

u09 boys
none

u11 girls
2nd Karmishta Moodley
4th Santham Moodley
5th Priyasha Naidoo

u11 boys
1st Naseem Ahmed Essa
3rd Eli-Jordan Govender

u13 girls
1st Zahra Kara
5th Dayaan Parthiephal

u13 boys
1st Sachin Reddy
2nd Cailin Chetty
4th Aaron Jude Naidu




GOLD
 Aarti Datharam
 Naseem Ahmed Essa
 Zahra Kara
 Sachin Reddy
 Keyana Padayachee
 Kenyon Padayachee








SILVER
 Diya Datharam
 Karmishta Moodley
 Cailin Chetty
 Saiyuri Naidoo
 Nobuhle Ndunakazi










BRONZE
 Eli-Jordan Govender
 Kyran Appanna
 Viashna Hansraj









u15 girls
1st Keyana Padayachee
2nd Saiyuri Naidoo

u15 boys
5th Shivar Gopaulsingh
6th Tarendra Moodley
8th Liam Moodley

u17 girls
2nd Nobuhle Ndunakazi

u17 boys
1st Kenyon Padayachee
3rd Kyran Appanna
4th Jivorn Reddy

u19 girls
3rd Viashna Hansraj
4th Caitlin Chetty

u19 boys
8th Kieron Dowie


Wednesday 9 July 2014

KZN Schools championship, 28th June 2014

A selection tournament to pick the KZN team to go to the SA Schools championship in Bloemfontein was held on 28th June 2014. Thanks to National Convener Mr Vicky Magu for attending this event and to Chess SA for sponsoring the costs of the tournament.

Here are some details on the chess event in Bloemfontein.
For more information, contact Bongani Mkhunya.