A message from the Chairperson
As I have a few hours of downtime today, I wanted to take this opportunity to wish all of our members a Happy Christmas and apologise for the issues that plagued our site last week. Unfortunately, Irish tournaments were most affected by this outage as well as members who are interested in these events so I'd like to take the chance to point you toward some upcoming and completed events. I've then tried to provide some updates on the ICU Committee, which is followed by a list of FIDE awards earned by our members in the latter half of 2015 and finally some special thanks to a few members who have helped the ICU in the last few months.
Recent Events:
The 2015 Mick Germaine Cup was a great success and featured 19 junior teams of 4. I'd like to thank Pat Fitzsimons for providing us with his report as well as an array of photos from the event. Congratulations to all who took part and also to those who helped make this event so successful including parents, coaches, Pat and Elm Mount CC.
The Kilkenny Chess Congress was at full capacity this year which shows just how popular the event is and how important it is to the ICU calendar. The event even featured on an IrishTV report with several impressive interviews from some of our fellow ICU members. Congratulations to Maurice and his fellow organisers and best of luck with the 40th edition of the event in 2016!
Upcoming Events:
The first events on our calendar for 2016 are the Mulcahy Memorial and the 2016 Leinster Junior Championships which are from the 1st-3rd and 1st-4th of January, respectively. The latter will include a special guest speaker. These events are followed by the Gonzaga Chess Classic from 22nd-24th of January and Enniscorthy Congress from 29th-31th of January. The Women's Championship and Intervarsities will follow these events in February (with dates to be announced in the coming days). The Bunratty Chess Festival 2016 returns for its 23rd edition of the event from 19th-21st of February - NB the Bunratty Castle Hotel is already over half full and is expected to be filled in the next month. Finally, the gap in between Bunratty and the Cork Congress is to be filled by the Irish Blitz and Rapidplay Championships with a venue and date to be announced.
Executive News:
Despite the issues, my fellow committee members managed to complete and continue some very important work for our Union some of which is listed below.
Our PRO, Carl Jackson, produced the first League Review which was published on December 24th, 2015.
Our Rating Officer, Andrew Kildea, has created an online entry system which will be available to all of our tournament organisers in 2016. His own Enniscorthy event will be the first to use this and I hope other events will make use of it in the future.
A junior coaching curriculum created by our Vice-Chairperson, GM Alex Baburin. Meanwhile, our Junior Officer, Desmond Beatty, has busily been working to compile a roster of coaches - not only for his Sunday courses but also for other projects in the works. I believe these junior courses will be starting in January and running, as per usual, throughout the season.
Our Development Officer, Rory Delaney used the time to organise the Intervarsity Championships 2016 which is scheduled for February, 2016.
Our Secretary, John Kelly, made an ICU Facebook page in the hope that it will allow us to reach a wider audience with our news & event details. It was agreed that this account should be created at our first executive meeting.
Our first newsletter is to be completed in the coming weeks with information on our first executive meeting, a more complete update on the activities and plans of the executive, more details on upcoming events listed above and some reports that haven't already been published on the ICU site. These include: the ECC, a detailed report on the Kilkenny Masters and an AGM and EGM summary with a copy of minutes.
FIDE Awards:
Karl McPhilips and Conor O'Donnell each received their FIDE Master titles in 2015.
Darko Polimac became a FIDE Trainer.
John Loughran, Gary O'Grady, Gerry MacElligott, and Henk De Jonge became FIDE Instructors.
Len Hackett became a National Instructor.
Walter and Anjali Walsh became Developmental Instructors.
Ted Jennings received his IA title.
I'd like to congratulate all of these members on their terrific achievements. If any other members would like information on these titles, please click here.
Special Thanks:
I'd like to extend a special thank you to Shannon Clements for his recent work in helping us to get back online. I'd also like to thank Tim Harding for taking the initiative in organising and encouraging our over 65s to play more international events. Tim is still hoping to find a member to coordinate the over 50s.
In truth, we have received help from countless members in our first 75 days on the ICU committee and I'm very grateful to each and every one of them.
I wish you all a very happy Christmas, a prosperous new year and I hope to see many of you at as many events as possible in the coming year.
Kind Regards,
John McMorrow