There are an increasing number of independent junior chess organisations, for teams or individuals (or both), at standard rate play or rapid play, for varying ranges of age group, all organising “championships” of some sort or another, and embracing just England or the whole of the UK or whatever. One such organisation is EJCOA which is an acronym for the “English Junior Coaches and Organisers Association” - with no explicit mention of chess in the name!

EJCOA organises the “EJCOA National Youth Championships” which sounds rather like the event run by the National Youth Chess Association though the former is for individuals while the latter is for teams. 2023 seems to be the second annual event. The EJCOA individual championships are run for the following age-group sections: Under 8, U10, U12, U14, U16, U18 and U20, to produce separate boy winners and girl winners for each age band. The first stage consists of rapidplay Zonal Events run around the country to provide qualifiers for the final stage. The event description is non-specific (or badly worded) and leaves it uncertain as to whether the final stage will be at a standard rate of play.

One of the zonals was run in Sheffield by Jonathan Arnott on 01/04/2023 at The Rutland Hotel, 452 Glossop Road, Sheffield. The event was listed in the ECF Calendar, but rather oddly did not make its way onto EJCOA’s own list of zonal events. Zonal events are open to players from around the country, not just the locality of the event in question. Sheffield seems to have been the only such event so far in the Northern Counties though ones in Cumbria, Tyne and Wear and North Yorkshire seem to be in the planning stages at least. The finals are scheduled for July 7th-9th 2023 in Nottingham.

Results from the Sheffield event were as follows. They were extracted from the ECF Rating website.

No.	Name/Club	Rating	Round 1			Round 2			Round 3			Round 4			Round 5
1	Srivathsan Sasikumar	1809A	1	W	7	1	B	6	1	W	11	1	B	2	1	W	3
	Alwoodley			1			2			3			4			5
2	Aashita RoyChowdhury	1429A	1	B	15	1	W	4	1	B	3	1	W	1	1	B	5
	Alwoodley			1			2			3			3			4
3	Adamjeet Singh	1211A	1	W	10	1	B	8	1	W	2	1	B	6	1	B	1
	Queen’s Gardens (Bradford)			1			2			2			3			3
4	Hasana Garuda	1121A	1	W	14	1	B	2	1	W	8	1	B	11	1	W	6
	Wakefield			1			1			2			3			3
5	Vidhyuth Kavin Sudagar	1020A	1	W	16	1	B	11	1	W	7	1	B	10	1	W	2
	Alwoodley			1			1			2			3			3
6	Amandeep Singh	1028A	1	B	12	1	W	1	1	B	15	1	W	3	1	B	4
	Queen’s Gardens (Bradford)			1			1			2			2			3
7	Yichen Zheng	896K	1	B	1	1	W	12	1	B	5	1	W	15	1	W	11
	Liverpool			0			1			1			2			3
8	Savannah Ashton	1010K	1	B	13	1	W	3	1	B	4	1	W	12	½	B	9
	3Cs (Oldham)			1			1			1			2			2½
9	Vanessa Ashton	783K	½	W	11	1	B	16	1	W	10	1	B	14	½	W	8
	3Cs (Oldham)			0			1			1			2			2½
10	Chuanxi Wang	847P	½	B	3	½	W	13	1	B	9	1	W	5	1	B	15
	SASCA			0			½			1½			1½			2½
11	Sai Pranav Peddi	1126A	1	B	9	1	W	5	1	B	1	1	W	4	1	B	7
	Amber Valley			1			2			2			2			2
12	Dominic Pugaciauskas	817K	1	W	6	1	B	7	1	W	16	1	B	8	1	B	13
	Solihull ?			0			0			1			1			2
13	Omar Moylayev		1	W	8	½	B	10	½	W	14	1	B	16	1	W	12
	?			0			½			½			1½			1½
14	Alexei White	743A	1	B	4	1	W	15	1	B	13	1	W	9	½	B	16
	Wirral Juniors			0			0			1			1			1½
15	Albert Biermann	873A	½	W	2	1	B	14	1	W	6	1	B	7	1	W	10
	Notts. Juniors			0			1			1			1			1
16	Kai Abdulla	685P	1	B	5	1	W	9	1	B	12	1	W	13	½	W	14
	SASCA			0			0			0			0			½