Saturday, 11-9-2013, Qualifying Day!

Our old banner (the new one was also displayed)

Jan and Barbie from Portland, OR

Ladies team from Poland with Jo Ella and Pat from SFPC

Tournament Director, Christophe Chambers

The Gang

Alexandra w/Terry

Josh and Bo from Zanesfield, OH

Bum'-pass

Pretty in pink, er... purple!

Joe Corcoran from Australia!

Youssef's lovely ladies

One of our losses-  Claudy Weibel and J.P. Subrenaut

Erin and Mike

Fun!

Best player in the world, Dylan Rocher, with Khalid

Damien Hurreau hit 49 of 50 in shooting competition

Dylan hit 60 in a row at 8+ meters in shooting competition!

Hemon ("Tichon")  hit 42 of 50!

Four previous world champions and one current world champion (Rocher)!

Party with Ken (Gus Vespa)

Bo Johns giving Marco a few pointers (?)

Christophe and Philippe-  Promoters extraordinaire

Saturday dawned with weather that looked to be just about perfect for a long day of petanque.  The 124 teams (four no-show teams reduced the field from the planned 128 teams) were paired for the first round of play, and the pre-tournament instructions were given.  A word from the mayor and the singing of the national anthem (no Canadian anthem this year?) kicked things off.

I don't know the results of the day's play for each of the nine teams from Carolina Petanque ( two of the nine teams had one player from another club, so we had sixteen players participating), but I think I'm safe in reporting that Khalid Mesbah, along with his partner, Youssef Hassoune from New York, posted the best record for Carolina.  They were 4 and 1 with their only loss of the day coming at the hands of multi-time World, French, European champion, Marco Foyot, and his partner Bernard Martin.

I think Kirk and Bo may have been our only other team to crack the top 32 in rankings-- thus qualifying to begin Sunday in the Concours bracket.  The balance of our Carolina contingent finished the day with records that relegated them to the Consolante brackets for Sunday play.