Last night I got the chance to compete against some of the best
athletes in the country at the Wooden Center.
When you’re 5-foot-7 and less coordinated than a drunken
Anna Nicole Smith, you don’t get the chance to do this very
often, so I had to take advantage of the opportunity.
Of course, I wasn’t exactly going one-on-one with Dijon
Thompson.
I was playing bridge.
Yes, I called the bridge players athletes. Bridge is a
sport.
Just ask the International Olympic Committee, which officially
declared that bridge was a sport. (It was an exhibition sport at
the 2002 Winter Olympics.)
And before you tell me otherwise, remember, three years ago many
of you e-mailed me and used that same argument when defending
figure skating.
UCLA has both a bridge team that competes nationally and a
bridge club that meets every week (Wednesdays, 5 p.m. in
Wooden).
The UCLA bridge team was one of eight teams that qualified for
the North American College Bridge Team Championships over the
weekend, and the UCLA team finished third at last year’s
championships.
The team is part of the Bruin Bridge Club, but the club is open
to players at all levels and will even teach you how to play if
you’re interested (like they did with me). They even have a
professional bridge coach on hand.
But unlike most beginners, I was thrown into the fire right
away. I was given the chance to play on the advanced table with the
UCLA team members Brad Haas, Daniel Aharoni and Saurabh Ganeriwal.
(The fourth team member, Blake Haas, Brad’s brother, gave up
his seat for me.)
Not familiar with those names?
Well, let’s just say I’d have a better chance of
winning the NBA Slam Dunk Contest than defeating those three in a
game of bridge.
And, remember, I’m 5-foot-7.
With all three players giving me tips on my first hand, I got
very lucky and my partner Brad and I won a grand slam (all 13
tricks) on the first hand.
It was then that I realized that’s the closest I’d
ever come to hitting a grand slam. Coach always asked me to bunt
the runner over in Little League.
Then reality started to set in as Aharoni and Ganeriwal played
like experienced players who knew what the other was doing, and
Brad didn’t have any clue what I was doing.
That, of course, is because I had no clue either.
But you know what ““ I still had fun.
Bridge is fun. And a sport. I broke a sweat.
Being a bridge player means being a different type of
athlete.
At the championships in July, the UCLA team will have to play
eight hours of bridge per day for three consecutive days.
True, you might say it’s not that hard because it’s
not physically taxing. But staying mentally focused for that long
that regularly ““ which you have to do to excel in bridge
““ is tough.
And they practice. They practiced anywhere from 10 to 20 hours
per week before last week’s national qualifiers.
But these guys do it because they love bridge.
“Every hand has something new,” said Ganeriwal, a
graduate student in computer science. “There’s no book
with all the rules. Every game is a fresh start.”
There’s perks involved too.
By qualifying for the championships, the UCLA team earned an
all-expenses paid trip to Atlanta. Free.
Before you laugh at Atlanta, consider that the team was flown to
New York City for free for last year’s championships.
“I really enjoyed the high-level competition and got to
meet a lot of new people,” said Blake, a second-year
physiology student. “It was great to travel to New
York.”
Not a bad perk, courtesy of the American Contract Bridge League,
which is trying to recruit younger players into the sport, and
probably help get the sport away from the stereotype that
it’s an old-ladies game.
As far as I’m concerned, bridge is a real sport.
And most importantly, it’s fun.
E-mail Quiñonez at gquinonez@media.ucla.edu.