Youth Coordinators Report

The 2004-2005 year has been an exceptionally busy year for me.

On the Ontario front, we had to run an earlier than usual Ontario Youth Chess Championship as a result of the Canadian Youth tournament having been moved up.

The OYCC was held in January instead of the usual spring time period.

This meant that the tournament had to be somewhat hurriedly organized and suffered from a lack of promotion.

The early timing also meant that many of the regional tournaments that sent kids to the OYCC were not held at all.

Another concern was the prospect of people having to travel to the tournament in a period of unpredictable driving conditions.

With all these considerations, we were still able to draw over 65 players to compete.

We were also able to sponsor several of Ontario’s top youth players to the CYCC. Ontario players made up almost half of the players at the CYCC in spite of it being held in Victoria BC!

The Ontario players made Ontario proud when they captured more than their fair share of top spots at the CYCC too.

Of all the players that are heading to the World Youth Chess Championships, half are from Ontario.

In other areas, there was no Ontario Junior Bursary tournament held this year. This was because of the Canadian Junior being held in Brantford Ontario and no bids were received to hold the tournament. The previous years Ontario Junior Bursary was somewhat less than successful at attracting Ontario’s top junior players. This is an area that needs more focus and thought put into restructuring for next year.

In the area of introducing Chess into the Regular School Curriculum, I have had meetings with MPPs and have prepared an initial proposal for running a pilot program to measure the potential benefits. I am attaching my initial draft for this proposal and would welcome input on this.