Waterfront Hall Schools Team Challenges

Primary Schools Challenge 12 April 2002

This is now the fourth year running that Adrian Skelton and David Houston have organised competitions at the prestigious Waterfront Hall site. For the first of this year's two competitions there were 18 teams of 4 players. The 72 boys and girls came from 5 Primary schools - Cairnshill, Edmund Rice, Inchmarlo, St. Bernard's and St. Colums (Portstewart). In fact, more children turned up than expected, which necessitated sending out for more sets! This meant in the early rounds there were some consultation games, but the children seemed to enjoy these even more than the one-on-one combat.

Final scores (4 Rounds):
1st Cool Cunning Kings (St. Colum's) 9.5
2nd Cairnshill Kings 9.0
3rd equal Cairnshill Pawns, Cairnshill Players 8.0
5th Cairnshill Castles 7.0
6th equal St. Bernard's Bishops, Fighting Knights (St Colum's), Noble Knights (Inchmarlo), Black or White (Edmund Rice) 6.5
10th Lord of the Kings (Edmund Rice) 6.0
11th equal Cairnshill Checkmates, Lords of the Boards (Edmund Rice), St. Colum's Castles 5.5
14th equal Ruthless Rooks (Inchmarlo), Noble Kings (St. Colum's), The Quiet but Quick Queens (Edmund Rice) 4.5
17th Portstewart Pawn Power 4.0
18th St. Bernard's Battlers 2.0

The top 4 teams qualified for the next Waterfront Hall competition where they faced teams from Secondary Schools.

Schools Chess Challenge 31 May 2002

The second of the two team events featured 16 teams - the four Primary School qualifiers from the first event plus 12 teams of pupils from Forms 1 to 3 from 6 Secondary schools (Ballyclare High, Larne Grammar, Methodist College, R.B.A.I., St. Malachy's and Sullivan Upper).

The MCB Monarchs team was in the lead from the beginning and was 2 points ahead of its nearest challengers, Sullivan Black Knights, going into the final round. The two leading teams were drawn against each other in the final round and with a 3-1 victory Sullivan drew level with their rivals. The players from both teams received winners' medals and the two schools will each hold the trophy for 6 months.

Final scores (5 Rounds):
1st equal MCB Monarchs, Sullivan Black Knights 15.0
3rd RBAI Checkmates 13.0
4th Pawn Cocktails (St. Malachy's) 12.0
5th equal St Colum's Kings, RBAI Noble Knights 10.5
7th RBAI Black Knights 10.0
8th equal Cairnshill Kings, The Rookies (Ballyclare High) 9.5
10th Ha Ha Stupid Move (Larne Grammar) 9.0
11th equal King's Pawns (St. Malachy's), Knights of the Square Table (Larne Grammar), Cairnshill Players 8.5
14th equal Pawn Crackers (St. Malachy's), Sullivan Suicidal Masterminds 7.0
16th Cairnshill Pawns 6.0