As some of you may know, I play table shuffleboard in a couple local and national leagues. This exciting game is played on a raised table that is 22 feet long, narrow and slightly concave. The object of the game is to get your weight down the table to the scoring side. Your opponent tries to knock your weights off and/or go around your weights so that they are the ones scoring.
This year, I attended the 23rd Annual Women Wondering the World Tournament in Del City, Oklahoma. Several of the Houston ladies got together to travel there and we rented a lovely house. It was like being in a sorority with your fellow sisters for a whole week. Not that I know what that actually is like as I never joined a sorority when I was at university. But I imagine it was kinda like this past week’s adventure.
There where several events during the tournament and I decided to hop into all of them. It started on Wednesday with the AB draw. This is where a top level player is paired with a beginner player and they work as a team. I was paired up with the amazing Mary Hoang. Unfortunately, we didn’t fair well, mostly because I was so nervous I gave up way too many points on my end of the board. Still, I got to see her play and watch her strategy which was a great learning experience.
The next day’s event was the ABC Draw. Like the AB match up, players were randomly sorted into teams of 3 ladies with an advanced, intermediate, and beginner player. I had the awesome Joyce Roberts and Amelia Reed on my team. We fought hard, but were defeated quickly. Again, my nervous anxiety at failing these wonderful ladies managed to make my self-fulfilling prophecy come true — I failed them.
Then there was the Singles tournament. In the winners bracket, each match consisted of best out of 3 games of 15 points each. I won my first contest against Carla Louvier. She was a tough opponent and I managed to win just barely. Then I lost my second match up against Lesley Petterson. She is an amazing player and placed in many events. Once I struck out of the winners bracket, I landed in the loser’s bracket and had to play a single game of 21 points to stay in the running. Sadly, I lost to the amazing Linda Aragon. What a great player and such a nice person too.
The last day, was the Doubles tournament. My partner was Sharon Gilmore. We are both beginners so we didn’t expect to do very well. We lost our first match up 2 our of 3 against the powerhouse team of Helen Soto and Patty Pierce. Then we went into the losers bracket and won our first match against Kathy Sparger and Tera Bradstreet. Sadly, we lost the second match in that bracket against Cayenne Kilpatrick and Leanna Prigmore. Considering we thought we would lose every match, we did very well for our first time.
I learned so much from all the wonderful players and had a blast hanging out with the great friends from my Houston league. I will definitely do this again next year.