In another first for the Pasadena Bridge Club, we hosted a two-day team final for the Grand National Teams.
There was some doubt that we'd even be able to host the game! The club has a capacity, at the moment, of twenty tables. There were 24 teams registered as of Thursday!
The coordinator for the game convinced the A-flight bracket of three teams to move their game to a Sunday one-day final, which brought the Saturday attendance down to 21 tables. Just enough to fit, if we added a table in the hallway.
When our tournament director Brendan arrived on Friday, we decided we could fit a sixth table in the classroom if we angle the tables at 45 degrees. For team play, this is a fine arrangment of the tables.
My job was making coffee (OMG so much coffee!), restocking snacks, acting as board caddy for ten of the tables in head-to-head matches, and keeping the snack room tidy. My Fitbit registered 17,800 steps on Saturday.
Sunday was much easier, with 11 tables in the morning, and six tables in the afternoon, as teams were eliminated in their brackets.
There are two teams I'm very proud of in the Flight C bracket:
One was our own Pasadena Bridge Club Tuesday Night crew, of Louise Wannier, Bill Purdy, Toban, and Benjamin Bascom. Coming into the game fully expecting to place last, instead they found themselves in fourth place at the end of the day and qualifying for the semi-final! They had to find a last minute sub for Benjamin in order to play on Sunday, but they did.
The other was our own Pasadena-area team in Flight C of Nina Huang, Ming Hu, Youngkang Huang, Sherry Warmuth, and Hanna Zhuang. I hope they get to compete in Chicago in the GNT Flight C championship and will be wishing them well!
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