by Austin Bell '10I had the unique pleasure of joining three members of the class of 2009 in Washington D.C. this summer to compete in the Collegiate Bridge Championships, representing Davidson.
Despite normally being a game reserved for octogenarians, bridge has captivated our interest during our time at Davidson, as we have played it together almost every weeknight for almost three years.
In February, we entered a qualifier for the tournament on a whim and ended up beating seven other teams for an all-expenses paid trip to D.C. at the end of July, where we would compete against seven other qualifying teams from Stanford, UNC-CH, UCLA, McGill, Princeton, Harvard and U of Chicago...
Day One of the qualifier saw us all wearing red Wildcat Pride shirts and playing in a round-robin to compete for a spot in the semifinals the next day. After eight hours of bridge, at around 11:30 p.m., we earned a spot in the semifinals, playing another seven hours of bridge the next day to pull down fourth place. Final Four! Not bad for never having played in a bridge tournament before.
Other highlights of the trip included meeting the New York Times bridge columnist, staying in a $500-a-night hotel for free and beating UNC-CH 20-0 (they were actually pretty nice).
You can see a picture of us dressed up (l-r) Esther Cline '09, Robbie Squibb '09, Austin Bell '10, and Jim Dickson '09. We wanted to all wear #30 jerseys, but we couldn't get the bookstore to loan them to us, so we instead carried the spirit of the sharpshooter inside of us, not hesitating to pretend we averaged an NCAA-high 28.6 points per hand.
Other highlights of the trip included meeting the New York Times bridge columnist, staying in a $500-a-night hotel for free and beating UNC-CH 20-0 (they were actually pretty nice).
You can see a picture of us dressed up (l-r) Esther Cline '09, Robbie Squibb '09, Austin Bell '10, and Jim Dickson '09. We wanted to all wear #30 jerseys, but we couldn't get the bookstore to loan them to us, so we instead carried the spirit of the sharpshooter inside of us, not hesitating to pretend we averaged an NCAA-high 28.6 points per hand.
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