Are you adept with taking photos on your phone? Perhaps you could join our club photographer group.
This group of volunteers takes photos of happenings at the club both spontaneously as a roving photographer or by request from an event convener. They are the key step in showing you photos on the website and in the newsletter, and on our club TV slideshow.
If you feel able to join this group, keep reading and let me (David Farmer, 0415 715 743) know.
Many of you will remember that we almost cancelled a Monday afternoon playing session due to a planned power outage for the building - but that this outage was itself postponed.
The power outage has been rescheduled, but this time at night from 10-12pm on Thu 3 May - so there should be no impact on the Bridge Club (though fingers crossed for the first session on Friday morning).
The power outage is part of preparation for the widening of Jacksons Road near Pittwater Road to allow a second lane of traffic turning right into Pittwater Road.
Joan and John Castle won the Michael Marks Shield against a field of 17 tables, ahead of Joan Fawcett and Sue Riley and Anne Small and Hans van Weeren. See more photos on our Facebook Group.
The Shield event remembers the solid contribution made by past president, Michael Marks, who during his presidential period in the late 1990s, oversaw the building of our current dedicated annex on the Nelson Heather Centre and the 21 year lease from the Council. Event convener, Annegrete Kolding, asked long term member, Sue Riley, to provide some background information. Interestingly John Castle was president at the time we first moved from the Mona Vale Golf Club to the Angophora Room in the Nelson Heather Centre.
Today's large field with a single winner tested our directors, Alan Davies and Cassandra Mitchell, as they were both running a Web Mitchell movement for the first time, complicated by adding in an Arrow Switch.
The committee and key representatives of our sub-committees met in the second half of January to think out loud about the future of the Club and identify decisions that needed to be made and issues that needed to be managed. Read our strategy meeting summary.
There were three key questions:
- Why are we here as a club?
- Where do we want to be in five years?
- What do we need to manage well to get there?
Anne Small has received her ABF Teacher Accreditation certificate following her successful completion of the Accreditation Program.
Anne is a recent addition to the Bridge Education team and this is timely given the forthcoming departure of team member Sue Falkingham, one of our other accredited teachers.
Bridge Education team members with this accreditation are Cath Whiddon, Sue Falkingham, Vickie Busteed and now Anne Small. Teacher accreditation is an important part of Peninsula Bridge Club professional bridge education program.
One player comment recently lamented the decline in numbers at our Thursday afternoon session. Another lamented how full the Wednesday session was becoming.
Overall our table numbers are growing. There is considerable variability across the year making comparisons difficult but our overall weekly number of tables being played (excluding our supervised sessions) seems to be about 30-40 tables higher than two years ago. The Wednesday and Friday sessions have shown the most growth, with numbers now often touching or just over thirty tables in play.
We currently have thirty-five permanent tables and are working on bringing this up to thirty-seven in the near future, seeing this as the room's capacity while still retaining our social area near the kitchen. We are also planning to buy additional chairs and side-tables to match these table numbers.
Congratulations to Lynn Baker and Col Dempster for winning the three week State Mixed Pairs qualifier event played on Thursday afternoons 8, 15 and 22 March. Despite a relatively poor last round, they finished on 165.81 just ahead of Barbara Gassmann and Patrick Starck on 165.12, and Lois and Terry Rothwell on 164.12, with these three pairs well ahead of the rest of the field led by Len Evershed and Patricia Giles on 154.50.
Having played in the event and having been chomped up and spat out by some of the boards, my esteem for those who did well is high.
Peninsula will pay for the top 4 willing pairs to play in the NSWBA State Mixed Pairs Championship to be played on 26-27 May.
The 2018 GNOT day qualifier finished today with the Small team (Margaret and Michael Draper, Anne Small and Hans van Weeren) triumphant at the close.
The event comprised a seven match round robin followed by a two match knock-out with the adjacently placed team (results here listed in two lines). The Small team was well behind the Ho team (Alexander Cook, Alan Davies, Vivien Eldridge and Robin Ho) at the end of the round robin stage but managed to win the knockout. The top two teams are eligible for free entry in the GNOT Metropolitan Final.
