Sedgemoor Chess Club – submission

I would like to enter our club, Sedgemoor, based in Bridgwater in Somerset, in the president’s awards2010, in the small club of the year.
We are a small friendly club; we welcome everyone at our club by offering free tea and coffee and a few games of chess. We have about 12 members with an age range between about 12 to over 80. Our oldest member has been playing competitive chess for over 60 years. At the other end of the age range we have been lucky to have helped develop some good junior players over the years. Joe Jervis played for the England juniors and Ben Edgell became county captain and in 2008/09 season led the team to the west of England county championship, undefeated.
Two of our current junior players attend a local secondary school which holds an after school chess club. I have recently contacted the school suggesting that the club would be happy to help with the school chess club. We are waiting for this to be organised and are hoping to attract more players to our friendly club by assisting with more junior development.

The club actively supports county chess both in administration and with players in the team.  I am the current Somerset county president and have acted as stand in county captain. Sedgemoor regularly have 3/or 4 players in the county team. Until some of talented junior went to university last autumn we could have as many as 8 players in the county team.
The club is active in the local leagues, having one team in all 3 divisions. We have been successful over the years having won all divisions and the KO cup over the last few years. This season we have are the second division champions.    We try to encourage our lower graded players and our juniors to play leagues matches, as we feel that this helps to develop their chess.
We only have one disabled player (he is in a wheel chair) the club encourages him to play the all home 3 division matches. He is unable to travel to away matches.
We are fortunate to have a very good club room, with a fairly low rent. This enables us to keep annual subscription low, even so anyone who is not working or on low income, we are happy to reduce or even not charge any subs.
Club members regularly support local congresses and rapid plays by taking part in their events.
Once every year we place a display in the local library promoting our club and chess, this has attracted some new players to the club and been a worthwhile exercise
.A couple of times of the last few years we have tried to raise the profile of our club by inviting well know international players to give simultaneous displays. We gave a donation to Jovanka Houska to assist her in her to play in the world championships and she very generously came to our club to give us a simultaneous display. This was a great success with everyone really enjoying the evening.

The club has been going for several years and we hope to continue enjoying and promoting chess in the area for many years to come.

NOTE- the above was submitted for 2010 and the following updates to 2011

The only difference this year is that we have lost a couple of players to work commitments. This means that we have only entered teams in the first and third divisions. Everything else is as per last year’s entry.