GP7 at Sutton Valance has been moved back one week to the 1st of June since the school could no longer accommodate us on the 25th.

On Saturday 26^th April our Kent U9 squad all had an early start to travel to Nottingham for the Inter Counties Final. Most by car or train that morning, but 1 or 2 the previous night, we all arrived safely and in time to do battle with the 17 other best county teams in the country. Those included our usual rivals Barnet, Wey Valley, Sussex and Nottinghamshire but perhaps it was Hertfordshire that proved to be the surprise package of the day.

Each round scores being from the 12 members of the main team, we achieved 8.5 in round 1, 10 in round 2 and 9 in round 3 totalling a very creditable 27.5/36. You may recall that Kent won the event last year and though that was an amazing achievement, in fact we only scored 25pts on that day. This time 2.5 pts more was only enough to secure 3^rd place, a mere half a point behind 2^nd place behind Hertfordshire.

The Kent reserves did manage 2^nd place in their separate competition to claim an additional medal and at this point I would like remind everyone of the contributions to the extended squad of Efe Shimwell, Ishaan Yewale, Mason Graves-Brown, Dennis Ivin, Radha Ratnesan, Jai  Singh Chaturvedi and Yong Gui Wang. They all contributed to our zonal win at Eltham and we definitely had more talent to pick from than from any year before. Provided all concerned continue to put in the work, I can only see us going from strength to strength. All 24 could conceivably fit into a 24 player U11 team in 2 years’ time (isn’t that an appetising thought!) and many will still be available for the U9 team next year too!

So, enjoying a wonderful day was Haolin ‘The Master’ Zhao, ‘Rampant’ Ranesh Ratnesan, The Bobster (Robert Akeya-Price), ‘Killer Queen’ Naviein(aah) Haridas, Charlie (Metcalfe) ‘The Cheeky Champ’, Thomas ‘The Hit Man’ Gardner, ‘Hurricane’ Huseyin Gueriane, ‘Magnificent’ Moad Shamekh, ‘Nimble’ Kimball Catling, ‘Awesome’ Anika Roy, Alex ‘Lethal’ Levin, ‘Axeman’ Abishaik Gnanethiran, Oliver ‘The Destroyer’ Dobson, ‘Dangerous’ David Dallakyan, Shaun ‘The Power’ Passari, Charlotte ‘Brutal’ Bruce and ‘Super’ Saahil Bansal.

I could offer a special mention to the main team 3/3 maximum’s of Haolin, Ranesh (Birthday Boy!), Charlie and Abishaik or indeed to the terrific reserve score of 2.5/3 from David, but in truth nobody had a bad total and in most other years we would have come away with golds all round.           

Congratulations to Barnet for an unbelievably good score and thanks to all those who attended on the day including anxious nail-biting parents and of course the managers Ratnesan and Bansal senior(!) for all their hard work.    

1^st Barnet 31.5

2^nd Herts 28

3^rd Kent 27.5

We’ll be back, but for now over to the U11s…

GM Chris Ward

Our sixth GP was held on Sunday 13th April at The Schools of Somerhill.

Once again there was beautiful sunshine to welcome everyone on arrival at this lovely Kent venue. It was great to see so many children coming along from so many different schools and counties, making this yet another hugely successful KJCA event.

Thanks to the many parents and children who kindly helped out on the day, without you we would not be able to function and always all help is always much appreciated.

U9: 1st Charlotte Bruce (5.5 / 6), 2^nd Efe Shimwell (5 / 6),

U11: 1st Aardash Saravanan (5.5 / 6), 2^nd Mahuaa Verma (5 / 6)

U14 (merged with the U18s): 1st equal: Aryan Narayan, Rajeiv Ratnesan, Pramoth Ragavan, Edward Burton (2.5 / 5)

U18: 1st Girinath Haridas (4.5 / 5), 2^nd equal Raunak Rao and Michael Green (4 / 5)

Primary School: Claremont Primary (69.8)

Secondary School: St Olave's Grammar (57.6)

Full cross tables can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/result/69

Current leaders of the GP tables after this event are as follows:

U9: Ranesh Ratnesan

U11: Kiran Shiatis

U14: Anantha Anilkumar

U18: Raunak Rao

Primary School: Claremont Primary

Secondary School: St Olave's Grammar

Full GP tables can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/site/page?view=GPTables.

Many thanks to The Schools at Somerhill for accommodating us and also a huge thank you to all the many parents and children who helped on the day.

Please note: Our seventh GP, will be held on Sunday May 25th 2014 at Sutton Valance Senior School. As usual you can enter online and we hope to see many (if not all) of you there once again.