President's Report

8 November 2004

This year has been a successful year for The Gap Chess Club. During 2004 attendances at the senior club have been maintained at the satisfactory level of 2003. Participation and interest in our tournaments has remained high. As a result the club has emerged at the end of the financial year (ending 30/09/04) with an increased balance on the previous year, ensuring that the club can maintain its services to members.

The success of the adult chess club can be attributed to several factors:

• a strong inclusive social atmosphere on Friday nights
• a structured tournament schedule
• the commitment of the players to attend on Friday nights, and
• the commitment to administration duties by those on the committee.

The club has retained most of the new members it gained in 2003 and has welcomed further new members in 2004. Publicity is important to gaining new members and the main way this occurs is through the Western Echo chess column and our club website. To achieve further publicity the club requires commitment from individuals who are able to write articles for newspapers (they don’t have to be long) and contact local schools.

In last year’s report to the AGM it was noted that the club’s junior section had been in decline during the second half of 2003. This decline continued during 2004 and the efforts of new coach Patrick Byrom were unable to arrest this decline. The result is that the junior club will close at the end of 2004. This has primarily been due to the lack of enthusiasm from the parents to be involved in the organisation of the junior club, but can also be attributed to the lack of a coaching presence in the local schools.

I believe that to resurrect the junior club what is required is an enthusiastic individual (or group of individuals) who can either perform or facilitate:

• working and being involved with the schools (through coaching),
• attending to the coaching on Friday nights
• managing the organisational aspect (collection of moneys and writing letters to parents and rosters).

The senior club has been successful and I do not anticipate any great changes to the shape and structure of activities at the club during 2005.

Andrew Robinson
President
The Gap Chess Club Inc.