Saturday Qualifying Day

Five games for each team on Saturday.  Ten women's teams to be reduced to eight by the end of the day.  Fourteen men's teams to be reduced to eight.  The games are on!

For those of you who may never have played in a big tournament, it's always difficult to keep up with what's going on throughout the entire terrain.  You just have to concentrate on doing the best you can and take it one game at a time.In this case, it was doubly difficult, because there were really TWO tournaments going on at the same time.  While we guys played ours, the women played theirs.  But we still wanted to be supportive of each other.

Unfortunately for Carolina, it was not to be a very successful day for the men OR the women.  The women did hang on to win two games and played well enough to break into the top eight via point differentials.  The highlight of their day was a win over the team of Gina DeJoy/Diana Jacobs/Tish Harris.  This team will now be the 2014 US National Team and both Gina and Diana (along with Erin McTaggart) will be representing the United States in Malaysia in September as the 2013 US National Team.  The Carolina ladies also won against Shannon/Mollie/Nicole.  But they lost to Erin/Narin/Barbara, Shannon/Maggie/Corrina, and Teri/Mary/Chia.

Less good news to report for the men.  We had an uncommon tie at 12-12 in one of our morning games.  The format for the day called for timed play with two more ends after the whistle.  Our game was still tied after the two additional ends.  The rules allowed us to play a tie-breaking end UNLESS we exceeded the time allowed for additional ends.  It's a little confusing, but the end result:  12-12.

We got our first win against a good team from Portland.  Three losses concluded our day.  Looking back, at least we can legitimately claim that our losses were to strong teams.  Without giving away the ending, on Sunday, the teams we lost to on Saturday finished #1, #3(tie), and #3(tie).

Our best performance in a losing game was against Ziggy, Paul, and Mickey.  We played a little over our heads and had them at 12-9 with the final boule in our hands, but we pointed just short.  They then came back to score four in the next end, so we lost 13-12.  Close though.

We joined Kirk, Bo, and Shannon Hodge for evening dinner at a Korean restaurant Mixed Grain downtown.  Our first time trying Korean.  Absolutely delicious!  Guess we're still not too old to learn something new.