Kent take second in the U11 EPSCA Eastern Zonal

Congratulatins to our young Kent U11 team for taking silver medals.

The EPSCA U11 Eastern Zone was hosted by Essex at Chingford Foundation School on Saturday 15^th March. The sun was out to greet the nine counties competing for the U11 Eastern Zone title and also a place in the EPSCA U11 final which will be held in Northamptonshire on Saturday 10^th May.

Our young Kent team gathered full of excitement and anticipation, many playing in their first ever team event for their county. Right from the go, it was clear that our players were determined not just to qualify but to try and do so in style, with a good solid score of 14.5 in the first round, equal with Richmond and just half a point down on Barnet.

Barnet stretched their legs in the second round, taking a fantastic 19 out of twenty points, with Kent faltering slightly scoring 13.5 and now trailing by six points; but now clear in second place. Undaunted, the players picked themselves up for the last round, determined that Barnet would not have it all their own way. We scored a resounding 16 points, winning the round, but not quite enough to close the gap completely.

The final scores were as follows:

Barnet 48.5, Kent 44, Richmond 37, Hertfordshire 33, Essex 30, Cambridgeshire 27, Suffolk 24, Northamtonshire 19.5 and Newham 7.

Congratulations to each and every one of our team as they all played their part in securing second place. The strength of our opponents varied and hence it was luck of the draw with some of the children facing some very tough games.

The team was as follows: Freddie Hand, Ximan Mao, Kiran Shiatis, Haolin Zhao, Mikey Watson, Ranesh Ratnesan, Alejandro Ito-Aramendia, Aurideep Nayak, Ben Gardner, Gaurav Kocher, Timofey Selyukov, Freddie Nunn, Rajeiv Ratnesan, Aryan Narayan, Ben Barton, Navieinaah Haridas, Arjun Gobiraj, Edward Cross, Charlie Metcalfe, Ryan Malik, Kimball Catling, Sam Cartwright, Alex Garfield and Rikin Parikh.

A big thank you to all the players, parents, Rob Maguire, GM Chris Ward, Anil Anilkumar, our team managers Andrew and Krishna Shiatis, all the great coaches working behind the scenes in Kent, the team at Essex led by Dave Hawkins, EPSCA and all the great volunteers at the KJCA who help to keep the Kent Juniors consistently strong every year!