Surrey Schools Bridge Cup 2023
Ms Kirkland: The NHP Bridge Club formed in January 2021 and the members of the club have been learning to play bridge with Mike Bell, a professional bridge player, at lunchtimes weekly. Eight of our players were invited to attend the Surrey Schools Cup held at Richard Challoner School on 3rd Feb 2023. They were the youngest players present and acquitted themselves extremely well. NHP came 6th and 9th out of 11 teams (a bridge team consists of two pairs), and we are very proud of all our players. An especial well done to Josie C and Kai S whose final ranking as a pair was 8th out of 22!
Will H: All the 8 bridge club players have really been looking forward to checking out what a bridge competition was like. Energy levels were high! It wasn’t until we were on the tube that Ms. Kirkland informed us that we were going to be up against Year 8s through to Sixth Formers. We were not deterred! I can attest that Nikolai and I played against some boys with beards. At the tournament, we geeked out on a piece of technology we hadn’t seen before – the Bridgemate scoring device. It’s a really cool way of sending the scores from each match/table to a centralised person to collate them. The tone at the competition was one of serious focus, compared to our usual chatty bridge club atmosphere. We faced some really strong competition – playing 22 hands (3.5 hours of bridge) in all. It was nice to really get stuck in; I had never played that many consecutive hands. It was a bridge marathon! Our two teams finished 6th and 9th in a group of 11. It was a really great experience – and I hope that future years get to go back and compete. Thank you to Ms Kirkland and Miss Grace for giving us this great opportunity!
