Metropolitan Secondary Schools Competition
Description

The NSW Junior Chess League’s Metropolitan Secondary Schools Competition is a weekly teams competition for secondary schools in the Sydney Metropolitan area, the Central Coast and the Blue Mountains. (The rest of the state is covered by a separate Country Secondary Schools Competition.)

Matches are scheduled on a home-and-away basis and are played on Fridays after school (but may be played at other times by arrangement between the schools). The competition, which is for teams of four players, is played in four separate Grades:

• Junior Grade (school years 7 and 8)

• Intermediate Grade (school years 9 and 10)

• Senior Grade (school years 11 and 12)

Schools are divided into four regions (Metropolitan East, North, West and South-West) and, where necessary, teams are allocated to divisions within these regions (to minimise travel). Each division tournament is conducted as a round robin. The division winners proceed to knock-out finals to determine the region champions. These region champions then compete in knock-out inter-region finals to determine the overall competition winners for each grade. The division tournaments are held in second term and the finals take place in third term.

An invitation and entry form are sent to all secondary schools in the area covered at the beginning of first term (in February).

For further details see the other web pages for this competition (Rules, Resources, Results, etc.) or contact the Secondary Schools Coordinator, Richard Gastineau-Hills, phone 9412 4579, fax 9410 0609, email RichardGH@bigpond.com.

Australian Schools Teams Championships:  In most states the secondary schools competitions produce overall winners which thereby qualify to represent those states in the national event. In NSW, however, our Secondary Schools competition is divided into three separate grades based on school year and there is no single winning secondary team. A separate selection process is therefore necessary to select the NSW Secondary Open team, which may contain players from any secondary year (7 to 12). To be eligible for selection all members of the team must have played in our Secondary Schools Competition and, further, in at least 50% of the preliminary (pre-finals) rounds. If necessary, a play-off match or matches will be conducted between nominated teams. A similar procedure will be used to determine the school to represent NSW in the Secondary Girls division of the championships.

Schools wishing to nominate a team to be considered for selection as either the NSW Open or NSW Girls team should make their interest known to the Secondary Schools Coordinator before the end of second term. The selection (including any play-offs) should be completed by the end of third term to enable the selected teams to make their travel arrangements and prepare for the national championships.