2016 Firecracker

Saturday July 2 was “Youth Day” at this year’s Firecracker Sectional. The tournament featured a special 0-5 point beginner pair game, in which many SiVY Youth competed. More than half of the 10 table first session were youth players and exactly half of the second session were kids.

It was especially fun to see several pairs who had just learned bridge during the prior week’s summer camp come out to play, including Jamin Xie and Edward Han, who played both sessions and improved several percentage points in their second game.

Between sessions youth from the 0-5 and the other games were invited to enjoy lunch outside under the trees. About 35 young players participated in the pizza party, some discussing hands and others just enjoying spending time with their friends. 

There was also a great youth representation in the other games throughout the tournament. Of particular note was the 99er game at 3:00 p.m. Saturday, where both directions were won by Youth/Junior pairs: Nathan and Natalie Huang with a 62% game and Daniel Sonner and Lucas Huang with nearly 56%. 

An interesting statistic was recently calculated by our SiVY Program Manager, Michael Bodell: in 2015 about 15% of the masterpoints won by Youth in all of ACBL were players from SiVY. Based on the turnout at the Firecracker, it’s easy to see how this is possible.