Connie Nelson is wise enough to have escaped Snowmageddon and the frigid temperatures of Minnesota. Yet she is kind enough both to share the details of the upcoming St. Cloud Sectional in June. And also, Connie tells exciting tales of bridge at an Alabama regional and a Florida sectional!
We are most grateful for Connie sharing her adventures with us - and for updating us on Minnesota tournies, too. Plus - let's give Connie and her teammates applause for battling against giants! Facing the toughest in our game is how you get better yourself!
Carla Gengler - Jim Schnepf - Connie Nelson - Charlene Thul
At the January St. Paul sectional, I brought down flyers for the St Cloud Sectional to be held in June. One line on the flyer was vague. The tournament’s location just read: “to be announced.” Well, consider this the announcement!
We have a new location for the St. Cloud sectional which will be held June 18-20th this year. The tournament will be held at the Boy Scouts of Central Minnesota building at 1191 Scout Drive, Sartell MN 56377. For most players, you will not be driving any further than our former location. (But don’t put your car on auto-pilot and accidentally drive to the Whitney Senior Center!) At the new location, there will still be free parking, we’ll have more control over the meal times, and we will be able to offer more nearby meal options to players between games. The space is all one level, well-lit and we hope many of you will come. Yes! – we will still offer the ridiculous amounts of homemade goodies for which we are known.
Our updated flyer is appended to this message.
I thought I’d also tell a few quick tales of Jim and my bridge-related travels and travails. We arrived New Smyrna Beach, FL as of Friday night. We are just starting to explore this historically interesting area of Florida. On our way here, we stopped to play two days in the Orange Beach, Alabama Regional and one day at the Winter Haven, Florida Sectional.
At each stop, we were pleasantly surprised to find other St. Cloud Bridge Club players!
At the Orange Beach Regional, we encountered St. Cloud Bridge Club’s husband and wife team Greg and Darlene Nastrom. The four of us decided to team up for a publicized “bracketed” Swiss Team event. Once we had paid our entry fees, it was announced that it would be a “stratified” Swiss Team event instead.
After six rounds of six-board matches, our team had scratched and clawed our way to fifth place! We had only two rounds to go, and I thought we’d end up fairly high – at least in C. However, the next team we had to play consisted of professionals --- John Onstott, Drew Casen, James Krekorian, Jacob Morgan and Howard Parker III. After the tournament, we looked up their Master Points. Their team had over 120,000 master points! The four of us combined had 2100 Master Points. While we beat them on one hand where I made 3NT and their partners weren’t in game, we were blitzed overall and earned zero victory points. I thought, “Well, we’ll get a more normal team for the last round.”
But no, we were paired with a team consisting of pro/ client combos. Long story short, on the last two rounds we ended up with zero Victory Points, stalling in the water and coming in 17th out of 22 teams. Bah humbug!
At the Winter Haven Sectional, we walked in the door and found St. Cloud bridge players and sisters, Charlene Thul and Carla Gengler, already signed up for a Senior Pairs event. What a small world! However, the local players weren’t so interested in them or us as much as in the fact that Eric Rodwell was there playing with his wife. I’m so out of it I didn’t even recognize his name, but they quickly assured me that he is one of the top bridge players in America.
Looking him up later, I find that he is rated number three of all time in North America with 77,000 master points. Playing against him and his wife was fun; they were really pleasant players. Although I’m still kicking myself because I could have beat them one hand if I had only played the Ace of Diamonds against their game contract!
Now Jim and I are on the hunt to play against Jeff Meckstroth, number one in North America, who does live in Florida.
But, I digress. Back to St Cloud Bridge. It was fun to catch up with Char and Carla over lunch. Here’s our picture, followed by the promised St. Cloud Sectional flyer! (Flyer below the line)