A Message from Our President

This is an exciting time to be part of the Louisville Bridge Association. We have been working for several months on the renovation and decoration of our new bridge club in Plainview Village Shopping Center. We are in hopes that we will be in and settled by April 17, 2016. Click Here to see a few pictures of the remodeling as of mid March. Thank you to everyone who has helped us with the various phases of this project. If you haven't received the call yet, believe me, you will!

One of the main goals for our new bridge center is to bring in new members to share in the fun and the success. To that end, Norman and Candi, our two outreach teachers, have been working with a young man at Manuel High School. He has played once now at the bridge center to the delight of all the "old fogies" who encouraged and welcomed him. We hope to branch out into other schools and nurture other teens in this wonderful and challenging game. If you feel that you can help us in that endeavor, please let me know.

Last year we had such success with a first grade bridge program at Bates Elementary, that Norman and Candi have begun spring classes with that group of children who are now second graders. Of the twelve who completed classes last spring, about eight returned for this round of lessons and another ten joined them. These young people will hopefully continue through the grades and become part of the next generation of players.

Our mentor/mentee program has been very exciting. Currently we have 35 less experienced players paired with 35 more experienced players to help them transition from the novice game to the open game and to broaden their knowledge of bridge. Each pair has committed to playing six times in a three-month period, with a celebration game at the end. If you are not participating but would like to, please let Verna or Candi know and they will put you on the list for our fall pairings.

WATCH for the announcement of our GRAND OPENING! It promises to be the social event of the year, with food, fun and, of course, a bridge game.

Welcome to Louisville Bridge Association!

The Louisville Bridge Club, Unit 117, offers games every day and night except for Tuesday and Saturday evenings, when there are occasional special events. For more information call the bridge center, or the director for the game you prefer.

Hope you like the new LBA web site. We have many exciting ideas that will eventually make our web site "the Rolls Royce" of bridge sites, and are open to any suggestions. We still need volunteers to help out. As of now, Bill Toutant and I are doing everything. Bill is our site administrator is responsible for maintaining our new site while I work on getting nw features developed and implemented. As you will note, not all of the links are curently active but will soon be on a staggered rollout effort. If you click on a link and nothing happens, just assume it is not yet active.

Both short and long term commitment to keeping the site refreshed and up-to-date requires a team collaboration. I can use as many volunteers as available for the team but here are our most pressing needs at the moment:

  • Writers, of all kinds. We need writers for news; writers for history page; writers for tournament reports; writers for virtually everything. Dot Losey has agreed to be our editor/proofreader so no need to worry about about that function - just need to have a desire to write. The more, the merrier. Any takers?
  • Photographers. We need a constant refresh of photos from tournaments, events, new club, etc.
  • We need someone with a flatbed scanner to scan old documents and photos for the history page. Ralph has a scanner will donate if necessary.
  • Testers. We need people to test the site using all types and versions of various browsers.
  • Did we mention we need WRITERS?
  • Finally, we need someone with rudimentary computer skills to help keep our website file directory organized and ordered, and also archived as necessary.

Ralph will do the development while training Bill Toutant to be his backup. It would be nice to have more than one backup if anyone is interested in learning. Luddites need not apply! Ralph will also manage the team and coordinate activities, and also (along with Bill) remain as our technical go-to person. Bill is our primary system administrator and ensures that everything works as it shoud, and is timely updated.

If anyone out there has experience in graphic design, and especially for web sites, we can always use some help. Thank you in advance for any help you can provide. Let Ralph, Bill or Vangie know if you would like to volunteer.

A new series of bridge lessons are now in session. Beginning students can attend classes given by Mauri Malka on Wednesday evenings or those given by Verna Goldberg on Thurday mornings. Intermediate players can attend Tuesday afternoon classes with Verna. Friday afternoons, Verna will also be teaching her Best Bridge Series lessons that will cover various bidding conventions, including Roman Two Diamonds, Gambling 3 No Trump, Smolen, Support Doubles, Inverted Minors and Modified Capelletti. Those classes will also cover the play of the hand for defense and delcarer play. Brian Ross will continue giving small group lessons that give insight into the Mind of the Expert on Tuesday afternoons. More details can be found on the Lessons and Seminars page.

The annual winter Louisville Sectional was held from February 2 to February 8. It was well attended as usual, and in all likelihood, will be the last Louisville Sectional held outside of the new club premises. Yes, you read that correctly - we will be having all future sectionals at the new bridge club.

Our current board members elected in November are: President, Vangie Smith, Vice President, Jean Donoho, Secretary, Dotty Losey, Treasurer, Freida Trower, and Historian, Marianne Thomas. Elected to the four two year terms on the Board were: John Van Cleve, Norman Smith, Hannah Davis, Janet Vowels. Judy Banks was elected from downstate to a two year term, and filling out the remaining one year term for Marianne Thomas is Denise Tonini. This is a wonderful group of representatives for you. Please help them, share good ideas with them and help us make the Louisville Bridge Association even better than it already is.

Finally, anyone who has news that would be of interest to the unit members please send it along to me, Bill or Vangie. This also includes singificant rank accomplishments, obituaries, tournament results, just about anything. Also, I am once again doing the Midwest Monitor for Unit117 so please send anything to go out there to me as soon as possible.

Tribute to Joe

A very important message from our web site developer and manager:

I hope you like the new LBA web site. I highly welcome suggestions for improvement or change. My primary goal is to make the site easy to access and navigate. Over time, we will be adding many new features including a history page with many old photos and stories, a bridge problem page where anyone can share a story involving a bridge problem, a blog, and much, much more.

I would like to dedicate the new site to Joe Wright. Joe is a long-time LBA member who tirelessly toiled for many years to ensure that members had a way to look up game times and results, as well as receive timely news. This is not an easy job and all of us owe Joe a big THANK YOU for everything he has done over the years. He is now retired and enjoying other facets of life including now finding time to actually play some bridge. Thank you Joe. I could not have gotten this far without you having blazed the trail.

- Ralph Letizia, Web Site Manager