Episode 63: Katie Sullivan is Not Pumping the Brakes

Katie Sullivan, as a second-year student at the University of Virginia, has infused her love of bridge with her college experience, starting an officially recognized student organization and recruiting other college kids into competitive bridge. Hear about her meteoric rise in the game and her plans for UVA world domination. 

3:47 “Chalk it up” – how creative marketing got Katie needed contacts to create a bridge club.

10:50 Obtaining CIO status and how the club fair was a game-changer.

12:26 Trumpet players and bridge. Who knew?

17:09 Hoos Playing Bridge on Instagram.

18:50 Trying to teach the fundamentals, struggling with supplies. Creating slide presentations.

28:21 A shout-out to any UVA alumni who might want to help. Many students have branched out to playing sanctioned events at clubs. Katie is proud.

32:51 Katie, in her first year of college at Amherst, meets Michael Xu.

38:41 Recovering from a painful misbid by partner.

49:06 After success at the World Youth Teams Championships, Katie plans to get “seriously serious.”

53:40 Loving the postmortem.

1:05 Katie encourages all youth bridge players to plan on attending UVA when it’s time for college.

Katie’s article on Bridge Winners about starting a bridge club at college.

Hoos Playing Bridge on Instagram.

Katie’s first BW post: a love letter.

Katie in the New Orleans NABC Daily Bulletin.

Like cards? Play bridge!

Transcript:

John McAllister: I am here in person at my apartment with Katie Sullivan, who is quickly making a name for herself in the bridge world. She was on the USA2 Rona Cup team this summer playing in the World Youth Team Championships. She won the B Board a Match at that tournament. I was her and her partner's partnership coach, and she is the president of Hoos Playing Bridge. And she's looking at me like, is that the end of the introduction? So, Katie, we first met in Providence, Rhode Island at the NABC in the summer of '22. And then a month later, I got a text from Michael Xu, your bridge mentor at Amherst. And I forget what his exact words of the text were, but I was super fired up because you were transferring to UVA. We're here in Charlottesville and you've got 41 kids who apparently showed up to-

Katie Sullivan: More than that.

John McAllister: More than that.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. I think we had 49 at our first meeting and our second meeting we had 47.

John McAllister: Strong.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah, don't short us, John.

John McAllister: So, you call yourselves Hoos Playing Bridge. So, you came to UVA as a second-year last year. And did you know anybody at UVA?

Katie Sullivan: No, of course not. Why would I do anything that had any safety whatsoever? No, I didn't know anybody. I'd been to Virginia before, I'd never been to Charlottesville before. My aunt did go here a while back. She's a very proud UVA alum. She did her undergrad here, but she doesn't live here. She lives in Connecticut. So, I didn't know anyone.

John McAllister: So, we were in touch and I don't remember if it was from you. I think I got it from a third party, but so what you did is you wrote in chalk on sidewalks around grounds, tell us.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. So, coming to UVA, I knew bridge, even though it was a once a week kind of thing at Amherst, I loved Providence so much. And so, I knew coming to UVA that I wanted to start a bridge club. I had done my research. I knew there was not one, I knew there wasn't any kind of card club whatsoever. So I basically just needed a way to figure out if there was anyone else on grounds who went to UVA, who played bridge. So what I devised was I went to the store, I bought sidewalk chalk and I woke up one morning at 6:00 AM on a Sunday, and I walked literally all over grounds and I chalked... like have you seen those Got Milk? campaigns that they had in high schools where it's got a really short message to try to get people to drink milk?

That was the inspiration behind the message. But it was just, Like Cards? Play Bridge. And then a tiny URL where you could give me your number and your contact information or whatever, because I didn't want people to think that it was some sort of engineering club. Most people hear bridge, that's the first thing everyone asks me if I'm a civil engineer who's really passionate. So that was how I met some of the people who started out in my club. The most important of whom being Alan Hale, who is my VP.

John McAllister: Is that an elected position? Or is this a dictatorship?

Katie Sullivan: No, I mean, eventually, perhaps it will become some sort of... I mean, it's hard to give it any kind of official structure right now because it's so new. So I kind of just named him my vice president.

John McAllister: Was that last year or this year?

Katie Sullivan: Last year. Because to be a CIO, which for those of you who don't know is a registered student organization at UVA. Well, actually you have to have a president and a treasurer. And so, I said Alan was the vice president treasurer, I think.

John McAllister: You did it at six in morning, which I think was smart because there's not a lot of people on a Sunday that are six in the morning, but were you embarrassed at all to be doing the chalk stuff?

Katie Sullivan: I mean, no, honestly. Well, first of all, no one was awake until 10:00 AM because it was a Sunday morning at a college. But no, I mean, if anybody saw me writing stuff, it would be really nice to have someone be like, "Oh, what are you writing?" That might be an easier way to convince them to-

John McAllister: For sure. And so, when did you do that? I feel like you came, I didn't really hear much, and then I kind of was surprised when I saw the writing.

Katie Sullivan: I think it was in September, I think it was the beginning of September. So I had been here for two weeks, maybe three weeks because I mean, obviously when I first got here, I didn't even know where anything was or what the main medium was for that. At Amherst, I never would've chalked because that there was no sidewalks anyway, first of all. And second of all, people just didn't communicate that way. So it took me a couple of weeks to get acclimated and make a game plan for how I was going to do this.

John McAllister: Was there any every point where you were wavering on whether or not you were going to do it?

Katie Sullivan: No. I mean, I knew I wanted to play bridge and I didn't think there was another way for me to be able to do that. So I mean, it's not a huge school, but it's 16,000 undergrad. That is a lot. And plus there's graduate kids who could still also be playing bridge. I thought somebody at the school has to play bridge, even if I end up just finding four people and we just kind of play once a week, whatever. But I knew that I wanted other students to play bridge with and this was the best way I could think of to find them.

John McAllister: Were there other people that had done chalk that you saw? Is that where you got the idea?

Katie Sullivan: Yeah, it's a big thing at UVA. I mean, it's mostly done around the first year-

John McAllister: Dorms.

Katie Sullivan: ... yeah, because those are the kids who are more open to-

John McAllister: impressionable.

Katie Sullivan: ... all those kinds of things. But also in centers around campus, chalking is a pretty good way because it's like everyone's going to walk by it and chalk is really cheap. You don't have to really design anything. It's a really convenient communication method. So for pedestrian heavy college, if you have a campus that has a lot of sidewalks.

John McAllister: We're using UVA words here, like grounds is a UVA word. We don't call it campus. We also don't say freshmen, sophomore. We say first year, second year, some of that. Did you see somebody else's chalk and go, "Oh, that's what I'm going to do?"

Katie Sullivan: Well, I mean, I didn't see, the stuff that I saw wasn't necessarily for student group. It wasn't the same kind of stuff, but people will chalk for UVA sports events. There's some really elaborate chalk that goes up or random talks sometimes. Actually, funnily enough, a lot of the religious student groups do a lot of chalking, but...

John McAllister: Bridge is kind of like a religion. Obviously, I know you've talked to Jacqueline Cole and also, there's this kid who's at UT Austin who posted on Bridge Winners shortly after you wrote a great article kind of summarizing your first year as a bridge club president or founding a bridge club, which is on Bridge Winners, which we'll link to in our show notes. Have you spoken to the kid at UT Austin about how to get the word out or your chalk experience?

Katie Sullivan: Do you know the name of the kid at UT? Is it Rory or somebody else?

John McAllister: I don't know what his name is. He just posted on Bridge Winners and people linked.

Katie Sullivan: Was it his own post?

John McAllister: Yeah, it was probably a week after you posted.

Katie Sullivan: I don't think I saw it.

John McAllister: Really?

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. Now I have to go look at it.

John McAllister: Oh, people linked to your article. That was the first comment that was a link to your article.

Katie Sullivan: I love that. I'm glad people thought that it would be helpful to.

John McAllister: I mean, it's a great resource. Are you kidding? It's a great article, and I post on Bridge Winners sometimes and get crickets. You got a lot of response as you should have because I think it's really exciting to see what you've done and we'll go back, but fast-forward, this is your second year at UVA. You're a third-year student and you guys have CIO status. So now, last year you couldn't even go to the club fair because you weren't properly viewed in the eyes of the university. Now you are. And take us to that.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah, so we got CIO status. It was such an arduous process, but we finally got it at the end of last semester and actually, they didn't add us to the list serve of CIOs. So when they were registering student groups for the CIO fair, we didn't get an invitation to register. So we actually had to scramble. We got a spot, but we had to beg for it because we almost didn't.

John McAllister: Whose fault was that? Was it the university's fault?

Katie Sullivan: I mean, it was just an administrative error.

John McAllister: Got it.

Katie Sullivan: I mean, it's not-

John McAllister: Good thing you caught it.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. Actually, we caught it because Alan is also on the exec of scuba club, so they sent out a message about like, "Oh, this is where our table is." And Alan was like, "Hey, you should look into this." And I was like, "Uh-oh."

John McAllister: Oh, wow.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah, but-

John McAllister: That's great.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah, the CIO fair was a huge boost because last semester, the makeup of our group, it was basically... So Alan is a trumpet in the UVA marching band, which is a really big thing here. And so, pretty much everyone else was also a UVA trumpet. And then there was one pair who had played at home, but one of them was also a UVA trumpet. And then there was one pair who, one of them was roommates with one of my sorority sisters, and they had played bridge, and she was actually thinking of starting a bridge club and then had heard that I had done that. But the CIO fair was game changing because now are we still a lot of UVA trumpets? Yeah, we got a lot more UVA trumpets. We actually got put on the official UVA trumpet social calendar in their announcements, they announced, "2:00 PM Bridge Club on Sunday."

John McAllister: Oh, wow.

Katie Sullivan: Which is fun, but it's a lot of kids who aren't UVA trumpets too, which is really good for future prospects of growing the club and also just making it a club in its own right. It's not just something that... It's just what the trumpets do for fun on the side. But it was awesome. A lot more people were stopping by than I thought would. We had over a 100 people fill out the interest form, which we weren't expecting that all those people were going to come at all. We thought, okay, a quarter of those people will come and then we will try to retain most of those people. But half of them showed up, which was crazy.

John McAllister: This is at your first meeting. So today it's September 6th, when was the fair?

Katie Sullivan: The fair was August 26th.

John McAllister: And then you had your first session that Sunday?

Katie Sullivan: No, the fair couldn't have been August 26th. Our first session was August 27th, which is a Sunday, I'm pretty sure.

John McAllister: And then you had one this past Sunday, and what did you say how many people came?

Katie Sullivan: Our first one, 49 and our second one, 47.

John McAllister: And a 100 people signed up at the fair.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah.

John McAllister: So just to give you some context, I live in Charlottesville. I've said on this podcast before that I wanted to start a bridge club at UVA. The last time we had one, there was a kid named Sam Goldberg, and he probably graduated eight or nine years ago. And so, just selfishly, I wanted UVA to have a bridge club. So probably four years ago, I went to the fair.

Katie Sullivan: Really?

John McAllister: Yeah.

Katie Sullivan: How did you swing that?

John McAllister: I was in contact, I think with some UVA students that had an another club. And so, I just went to the fair, not with a booth or anything.

Katie Sullivan: Oh my God.

John McAllister: But I just went and talked to students about the possibility of playing bridge.

Katie Sullivan: Did you bring flyers or anything, or you got just kind of some gut?

John McAllister: No, I just rolled up there and let me tell you, people were like, "What are you doing?" So the fact that we have a legit booth with a 100 students signing up is great. I mean, I just wanted to feel it out. I just wanted to see what was going on. There's this girl, Tammy Leon Molina, who was the Queen of Bridge a couple of years ago, and I was really trying to get her to come to UVA, so I thought if she comes to UVA, part of the reason she won the Queen of Bridge is because... Actually, she's Michael's year.

Katie Sullivan: Oh, really?

John McAllister: And yeah, Michael.

Katie Sullivan: Like my year, you mean?

John McAllister: Michael did not get the King of Bridge. She got it.

Katie Sullivan: Why haven't I met her then?

John McAllister: Well, she goes to Princeton. She doesn't go here.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah, okay. But I haven't met her.

John McAllister: Well, I don't know that she's from Mexico, and part of the reason that she got the award is because she was teaching younger people, and so...

Katie Sullivan: Got you. Wow.

John McAllister: She took a gap year. And so, I was trying to get her to come to UVA, but anyway...

Katie Sullivan: Yeah.

John McAllister: But now you're here, which is, I mean, fantastic. And you're doing it. It's called Hoos Playing Bridge. You guys have an Instagram page?

Katie Sullivan: Oh, we do. And it is incredible. So if you're on Instagram, you should follow it because they're doing a great job with it.

John McAllister: Agreed.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. I tried to run that. I think I started, I made it for the second semester, the beginning of the spring, and I mean, I did a fine job. I passed it off to somebody else as quickly as I could. He did maybe a little bit of a better job, but we convinced some of the... There are now second years now to take it over, and they're blowing me away. I could never in a million years have done what they're doing and it's great. It's really good.

John McAllister: I've been out of town both of these weekends and I'm going to be out of town this weekend, but I'll probably come next weekend if I'm welcome. You guys have basically had all hands on deck sort of situation.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. It's wild. I mean, because-

John McAllister: That's a lot of people to teach.

Katie Sullivan: Before our first meeting this semester, we never had a time when there was more than three tables. Three tables was kind of our max. And at Amherst too, that was also the max. I don't think there'd ever been four tables. So not only did I have no experience, but I couldn't even visualize what it would look like to try to juggle that many tables. And basically what it looked like is I took everyone who had then knew ish the rules of bridge kind of maybe, and I was like, "You're going to facilitate this table. You're going to facilitate that table, and you're just going to teach them what you know. Do your best." I tried to give them a curriculum. It's a little bit hard to do that because last semester we didn't, I mean, they know how the game works.

John McAllister: You're talking about the people who were with you last year?

Katie Sullivan: Right. Because for the most part, a lot of those kids were with it for one semester. I had them last semester mostly. So they know mostly how the game functions. They kind of understand dummy and they know what a bidding box looks like. They know how to use it. Some of them may remember what a high card point is and how to count one, but that's basically what we've got. So I mean, basically they taught their tables exactly what they knew and then that was the entire first meeting. And I was just jumping from table to table the whole time, making sure that everything was going smoothly and answering questions here and there as much as possible. And the second meeting, I was planning it with the rest of the team that I brought to Chicago, and we decided we needed to formalize it a little bit more because it was so crazy last time, because we did not anticipate how many people were going to come.

So we made a whole slide presentation and it was really awesome. It was well put together. We recorded attendance via QR code. We gave them QR codes for Tricky Bridge and for BBO. And the we introduced ourselves and then we were like, "Okay, you may have been wondering how do I decide what suit to set as trump? We want at least eight cards. Here's why that's Golden." And then we kind of did the same thing. People were sorted by ability, self-selected. We had an interest form to see how seriously people want to take bridge. Eight kids were like, "I want to be really serious. I want to go to Nationals," which is cool.

John McAllister: Totally.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. We have not planned out Sunday yet, but we will do that in the next couple of days.

John McAllister: So that is Wednesday. How long are the meetings?

Katie Sullivan: So the rule is you should come for an hour. And when people ask me that question and I'm trying to convince them to come, I say, "If you come, you should come for at least an hour," and that's officially how long the club lasts. But I don't think I've ever had a week where people weren't there for at least two and a half hours.

John McAllister: Wow.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah.

John McAllister: This goes back to last year that the meeting was, you were suggesting an hour.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. And including now, I mean, we've had release tables for many a really long time. Basically, I cut it off when I have to go to chapter at five for my sorority. I'm like, okay. And if there are still people there who really-

John McAllister: That's great.

Katie Sullivan: ... want to keep playing, I'm like, "You can keep the supplies. You just better be on time next week."

John McAllister: Do you have bidding boxes for all 40 plus people?

Katie Sullivan: We don't have enough to have four at each table, but you can share. I think we have enough for half that. And we've gotten the local club, the JBA, which is in Charlottesville. They gave us some to use. We also have some from Forrest Swope, who also works at UVA, and we also have some that I got when I did the Best Practices Teacher Certification. But bridge supplies are a little bit hard to... I mean, they're expensive and stuff.

John McAllister: You also really only need one bidding box. I mean, you can just pass it around. It's not such a burden.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. I mean, we have enough decks of cards and that's what really matters.

John McAllister: What are you hearing from both the people who were with you last semester about the teaching? Are they enjoying that and then from the beginners, and are there any of new people who actually have played bridge before? So that's a three part question.

Katie Sullivan: Okay. So we did have a form that Alan sent out that was like, "What did you think of bridge club last semester? And you want to change this semester?" And I feel like most of the responses were just the snacks. "I love bridge club, let's keep it all the same. Can we get more Oreos" or something like that? So I don't know how... But John, I can't remember all three parts of that question.

John McAllister: Are they enjoying teaching?

Katie Sullivan: Are they enjoying, oh...

John McAllister: Do they miss playing or is it cool because they kind of can share their knowledge?

Katie Sullivan: A lot of them are still kind of playing because there's so many tables that sometimes...

John McAllister: There's a teacher/player at the table.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. Especially because I've been trying to group people somewhat by ability level. Because if people come in to the second meeting, they couldn't make the first one, but they still have no idea how to play bridge. You don't want to put those people with people who already know what they're doing a little bit. You don't want to bore anyone, have them disengage and then not come back. But I think everyone who I've talked to about it has really enjoyed it and has felt really proud that they're teaching people and they seem to be enjoying it, and they're coming back and it seems like it's going really well. And I mean, they're all becoming close to a similar level. Maybe the kids from last semester have a little bit more card sense, a little bit more knowledge about card play techniques.

But probably starting this Sunday, I think having looked at the interest form, having thought about what kids seemed really interested, what kids seemed like they were picking things up really quickly, we'll start grouping people a little bit more. And then I think they might be facilitating at a table or we might not need that. I might just be managing it all by jumping around, and they're learning at the same pace as the people that they kind of taught how to play. I mean, we've gotten a very small amount of kids who have played bridge before. I think this semester at least, definitely two. I don't know if there's any more. There's one student who played spades and thought he knew what bridge was, but didn't actually.

But I mean, I think in some ways that's kind of a blessing in disguise because they can get into it along with everyone else. There's no social barriers erected because of that, and they can feel engaged at the same level. They don't feel bored because there's no one else who actually knows how to play bridge. If there were some kids who actually really knew how to play bridge, then I'd have to take some of my best teachers, the people who I took to Chicago with me and have them play with them, and then I would be really a little more stressed. But I'm really excited for this semester.

John McAllister: Yeah, I think the enthusiasm, I mean, we've got some good faculty support.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah.

John McAllister: We've got alumni who are engaging, so absolutely. If any alumni are listening to this, please reach out to Katie or me. Katie, you're on Bridge Winners, so they can message you.

Katie Sullivan: Yes.

John McAllister: They can message you there. We're looking to send a team, absolutely the collegiates, but also there's the Georgia Tech Tournament in February. And so, there's going to be some fundraising around that. I mean, last year I remember it was a pleasant surprise for me that you actually had people that had played some bridge before, which I think was probably good because-

Katie Sullivan: Yeah, definitely.

John McAllister: You were not just carrying all the water, so to speak, in terms of... And they're playing at the local bridge club now, which is great.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. Well, I mean, that's one of the things that I'm proudest of doing. Because I mean, two pairs plus Alan, knew how to play bridge when they met me. Alan knew how to play bridge. He is a genuine, he played in the YNABC in Providence, and the other four knew the rules of bridge and the mechanics of the game and that you should open five of a major and three of a minor and respond for a major and high card points. And that was what they knew. But really quickly, I got four of that group of five to go to multiple local games the same semester, which is awesome. And spurred so much love of bridge on the part of... I got two of those to join USBF. They're starting whenever that starts up in a week or so.

John McAllister: That's Cade and who else?

Katie Sullivan: And Alan.

John McAllister: And Alan.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. He had just done it kind of in high school-

John McAllister: I thought Alan told me in Chicago that he was going to be not having as much time for bridge this year.

Katie Sullivan: Everyone always says that, but I don't know. You get the bridge bug, you can't shake it.

John McAllister: Exhibit A.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. So true.

John McAllister: I meant to go on BBO before we had this conversation because I wanted to look up when you joined.

Katie Sullivan: I don't know when I joined. Probably 2020, probably during COVID.

John McAllister: Because your mom plays bridge.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah.

John McAllister: You've got a sister that plays a little bit, I think.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. Well, my mom's played bridge, I think since 2018. She plays in the local club games-

John McAllister: Shout out to-

Katie Sullivan: ... semi-regularly.

John McAllister: What is your mom's name?

Katie Sullivan: Kristen.

John McAllister: Kristen Sullivan.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah.

John McAllister: She's down in Vero Beach?

Katie Sullivan: Yes, she is. And she's-

John McAllister: Racking up black points at the Vero Beach Bridge Club. Is she a life master?

Katie Sullivan: No. Actually, I mean, I have no idea how close she is.

John McAllister: She probably hits 500, that's why.

Katie Sullivan: She told me she had a certain number of whatever masterpoints she has. She told me what she had, and I was really surprised. I was like, "Oh my gosh, how do you even earn that much?"

John McAllister: How many masterpoints do you have?

Katie Sullivan: I mean, I don't regularly check it. Probably like 90. But I got six tenths of those over winter break while I was at Amherst. And then...

John McAllister: Your freshman year of college, that was your first masterpoints with your mom?

Katie Sullivan: No, it was online with Betty [inaudible 00:31:32], her brother plays with my mom, and they both live up, Betty [inaudible 00:31:41] is the head of unit 112 in District 4, which is up in New York where I used to live. So I played one random game with her. I think she was supposed to be playing with someone else, and I was filling in, or maybe she was doing it as a favor to me because I was so desperate to play bridge and had no one who would play with me. But it got six tenths of a master point from that. And then I didn't get any until I played with Michael in Providence, and we got a bunch. And then probably the next ones I earned were with you.

John McAllister: Yeah. Tell me about Michael, like meeting Michael at Amherst.

Katie Sullivan: Oh my goodness. It's so funny talking about Michael in the bridge world because he's just perceived in a very different way, I guess. And he definitely acts very differently as well. But at Amherst, Michael is the guy. He's the guy in our year that everybody knows. He's the guy that connects everybody.

John McAllister: Big Mike.

Katie Sullivan: Big Mike. So I mean, I don't think Michael remembers meeting me the first two times that we met, but the first time it was like we were all at a talk one of the professors was giving that was like, she wrote a book that she was talking about, and then we were all being introduced. It was like our first day at Amherst. At the end, he stood up and he asked for the mic to ask a question. And the first 90% was just a speech about him and how happy he was to be here and how much he loved everyone already. And at the end, he asked some question, I don't even remember, and he was wearing a bridge shirt when he did it. So I was like, "Oh, first of all, funny kid. And second of all, bridge." Then later...

John McAllister: Did he have a permit at that time?

Katie Sullivan: No.

John McAllister: That's preterm.

Katie Sullivan: That's a new thing. No. And then I bumped into him another time in the line at the dining hall, and he was wearing a bridge shirt, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, you play bridge?" He was like, "Yeah, I'm going to start a club." And I was like, "You should invite me for sure, because I play bridge." But no, he forgot both of those times, which is fine. The third time, I don't know, I somehow ended up on some dorm floor that wasn't my dorm. They were hanging out basically and listening to music or something.

One of my friends was there and somehow, or maybe I was going to meet somebody there, I have no idea. But I ended up seeing Michael and talking to him for a really long time, desperately trying to follow, as he described some article he'd written about the Monty Hall problem. And I was like, "Yeah, I know bridge." I totally didn't follow most of what he was saying, but I tried really hard to. And even still, he forgot about me, did not invite me to bridge club. I missed the first meeting and I was not happy, but went to the second meeting.

John McAllister: When did he start his club?

Katie Sullivan: Oh, somewhere in the first month of school.

John McAllister: And how did Amherst do at the Collegiates this past year? Did they play Collegiates?

Katie Sullivan: In Chicago?

John McAllister: Yeah.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. I don't think they brought a team.

John McAllister: Really?

Katie Sullivan: Yeah, I don't think they brought a team. I think they brought-

John McAllister: What's going on with that? Michael didn't have a team.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. Michael actually only played in the last day of the Collegiates. He was playing in...

John McAllister: Hot shot.

Katie Sullivan: He was playing in the thing that he won, I think.

John McAllister: Oh, 0 to 2,500 or something.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah.

John McAllister: 0 to 5,000. One Of those.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. So they definitely had some people, because my UVA kids were glowing about them. They loved the Amherst kids, but I think they just came, I think they had two pairs, three pairs.

John McAllister: But you guys had a team.

Katie Sullivan: We did.

John McAllister: You would've made the knockout stage, if not for a misbid by Alan. Your suit was hearts, and he bid six spades by accident. And so, that was the difference between qualifying for the top eight.

Katie Sullivan: No. It was so painful too, because this is like the last hand right before-

John McAllister: Oh my gosh.

Katie Sullivan: Literally.

John McAllister: Even though it's the last hand.

Katie Sullivan: So Michael has come to kib me-

John McAllister: Oh no.

Katie Sullivan: ... first of all. Second of all.

John McAllister: That's the worst.

Katie Sullivan: Another bridge club member, Kate Bachman, actually, maybe you met, she came to the basketball game that one time, and she was there, kibbing Alan, because she lives in Chicago. So she stopped by and slept over in our hotel room at night.

John McAllister: Oh my God.

Katie Sullivan: And so, this is the most important hand, but he's so distracted, or maybe he's nervous. I don't know that he just accidentally bid six spades and while I'm in the tank for 10 minutes. Okay, not 10 minutes, but it was a long time. And I'm clearly-

John McAllister: Agonizing.

Katie Sullivan: ... like agonizing.

John McAllister: As I've seen.

Katie Sullivan: And he does not notice at all.

John McAllister: He doesn't realize his misbid.

Katie Sullivan: He does not notice at all. I was...

John McAllister: Did you think about bidding six notrump? I think the story was that you can make six no, right?

Katie Sullivan: You can't make six, no. Six no is way down. Seven hearts is also down. Either way, it doesn't matter what I bid, because either way, we go down and they make their slam contract and now.

John McAllister: Who was this against?

Katie Sullivan: It was the second Georgia Tech team. It was just painful.

John McAllister: Georgia Tech's got a lot of teams in... I mean, the bridge program down there is pretty strong.

Katie Sullivan: It's incredible. I mean, I'm happy for that team that they got to compete, but it would've been really exciting for us to have been a club that just started.

John McAllister: It's exciting that you got that close, honestly.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. Well, I mean, this Collegiate Nationals, I want to bring at least one team. And I told them I fully 100% expect us to get a travel package and to Q and to do really well, because I know we can.

John McAllister: How do you get the travel package?

Katie Sullivan: They have online tournaments basically where you compete for them. And I think there are eight teams that get travel packages, which is as many just qualify for the knockouts. So if I know we can qualify for the knockouts, I know we can win one, and then we can use that to help other people get there.

John McAllister: I think probably Cade is the person that's most into bridge besides you.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah, probably.

John McAllister: Cade Johnson, right? That's his last name.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. Cade is actually our VP finance kind of. Well, he's an exec member and maybe we haven't fully defined his position in the Constitution yet, but it's been so great having Cade in the club, because he really got into bridge really fast, which is so nice to see someone who also was really into bridge. And I actually think I met him at the end of the fall semester, but he didn't know much beyond the mechanics of bridge. And now he's joining USBF and he's improving at a rate that I'm really happy with. He's done a bunch of things too. I know he's been a little bit in contact with Gavin Wolpert. I think that he and Alan are going to play in Gavin Wolpert's Tuesday games online.

John McAllister: The free Tuesday games at 3:15 PM.

Katie Sullivan: Cade really wants to do that.

John McAllister: Who does?

Katie Sullivan: Cade.

John McAllister: Oh, Cade.

Katie Sullivan: And Alan.

John McAllister: Cade and I played in it one time.

Katie Sullivan: Right. But oh my gosh, Cade also has this document where he tracks his bridge statistics and it's like the most intricate thing I've ever seen. It's wild. And it's like, I don't know. He's using it to help improve at bridge. I can never do something that organized. But yeah.

John McAllister: Cade and I played at the... So one of the problems locally is that the only bridge games are 12:30 on Wednesday and Friday, which conflicts with a lot of students' schedules. So there's a bridge club in Waynesboro, which is about 30 minutes away that you guys go to sometimes. And they only have two games a month. Ideally, we'd have a night game in Charlottesville that the students could play in, which I'd love to figure out a way to do that. But I played in Waynesboro with Cade, and he over called two clubs on a four-card suit.

Katie Sullivan: Wait, when was this? Was this the first time you played with him?

John McAllister: Well, we played online once, so I played in person with him once. And I remember as we're playing the handout, he's declaring, and I'm like, "How many clubs does he have?" But he was not bothered by, I'm preaching six, you want to have six clubs to overcall at the two level. Cade did it with four. And then him and Zach won the Waynesboro Club game.

Katie Sullivan: They did. When they texted me that, I did not believe them, because they're both real jokers, so I didn't even give it any credence whatsoever. And they were like, "No, seriously," they texted me pictures of the results. I was like, "Those are doctored." That was wild. I called them as they were driving home, and they were really happy, and I was really proud.

John McAllister: Was this when you were in the Netherlands for the juniors?

Katie Sullivan: No, but I was in Florida. It was after school had let out and I had already...

John McAllister: Yeah, they were playing in the sectional that we had at JBA a month ago, it's so cool. I feel like it's one thing to play at a club with other students, that's great, but once people actually start playing in sanctioned games, then they can really compound their learning and they meet other people. And I just think it's so exciting to see that.

Katie Sullivan: Well, I mean, that's connecting though. That's what is bringing youth bridge into the bridge world. If you're just playing at a college club, you play bridge, but it's not necessarily that in and of itself going to make you make that part of your life going forward as knowing what the experience at a local club is like. I mean, duplicate games really completely change the way that you look at the game.

John McAllister: Totally. You get a hand record, you get other people's results to compare, and you're like, "Wait, how did they do that?"

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. So I mean, that's one of my main goals this semester is bringing as many kids as I can to local duplicate games and to other duplicate games like nationals and sectionals as much as I can.

John McAllister: Do you know what it would take, I know you've done some teaching classes, but in order to start a game on a weeknight here in Charlottesville, do you know anything about that?

Katie Sullivan: I mean, you have to be a director. You have to get a sanction from the ACBL to have a game, and you can't change the time. If you do, you have to get a sanction for another game. And there's a fee you have to pay to the ACBL, and then there's also a per table fee. So it's a lot to set up. And it's something, I did look into it over the summer, but we didn't even decide to set bridge club meetings to Sundays at 2:00 PM until a week before. We were writing stuff on the poster, and we were like, probably Sunday's at 2:00 PM because college kids don't know their schedule. And so, trying to plan something like that is a little bit difficult. And the idea of having to get it resanctioned every time we need to move it.

John McAllister: Well, Nan Massie used to have a game on Monday nights. I wonder if it might be worth talking to her about that, but it was full 20. We would play 24 boards. It must've started at 6:30, I guess.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. But I mean, it is nice to have another component of the local games too, is if we had a duplicate game where it was mostly UVA kids, they're not getting their butts kicked. You know what I mean? There's really something going to a game and realizing that every single person in this room knows more than you.

John McAllister: Right, that's true.

Katie Sullivan: It's really what makes something.

John McAllister: I think we could get local people to come though. I mean, I think if I-

Katie Sullivan: Enough?

John McAllister: I mean, well, gosh, you guys are going to Waynesboro and you get three tables and you're driving 30 minutes each way. Not that I want to put them out of business, but I mean, you guys are keeping them in business, and it seems silly that we don't have something here. I really would like to read the text message you sent. I'm not going to do it. I see the look on your face. I'm not going to actually do it.

Katie Sullivan: What text message?

John McAllister: But I would really like to read the text message you sent me when you got home from Veldhoven, the Junior World Championships, because...

Katie Sullivan: I don't even know what...

John McAllister: Oh, then maybe I should read it.

Katie Sullivan: What message? Just tell me the general gist. What was the gist?

John McAllister: Well, I'll read it and if we don't want to include it, we'll just delete it.

Katie Sullivan: Okay. I'm a little terrified.

John McAllister: Well, it's going to kind of expose you a little bit because-

Katie Sullivan: No, John.

John McAllister: Well, I should read it to you and then we can decide. It's not a big deal to cut it.

Katie Sullivan: Okay.

John McAllister: Here it is. So you sent me a photo of you guys with your medals from the BAM, you and Khan, gold medals. Like how are we winning gold medals? Amazing. And then, like I said, "Are you sure?" Kind of like when Cade and Zach won the Waynesboro game. So then you send me this message on August 11th, 11:59 AM, "However serious I've been in the past about bridge, I'm planning to get seriously serious this next year, like insanely serious. I want to be far and away the best US Rona player next trials, so it's easy for me to find a partner. Khan ages out – that was your partner for this past one and team, and we've got a real shot at winning Worlds. Do you have time/interest in playing with me regularly or semi-regularly on Fridays?" I mean, I love getting that. It's so cool. It's so yes. I was worried because you guys didn't do that great in the round robin, and I'm like, "I hope this is going well for Katie." And then I get this photo of you guys with your medals and then this text, and I'm like, "Let's go."

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. Well, I mean, I know some players are all about results, and I'm not saying that results are not important, but honestly, I don't think I'm at the point in my bridge career where I can be taking results and making that. I mean, I'm still so new to bridge, and because I've learned fast, there are a lot of basic concepts that I never really picked up that I have to ask. I had never heard of a squeeze before a couple of months ago, and we'd have team meetings and Michael Shuster would just kind of start talking about something squeeze, and I was like, "What are you talking about? I have no idea what's going on." There's a lot of things like that. I had no idea what a coup was until a very short time ago. But I love learning desperately. It is the thing at the core of my being, it's the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning, and bridge has been really my first foray into learning that's not student in a classroom like academic, which has been incredible for me because I've been really scared.

There was a while where I was like, "Am I just a good student? Do these skills and passions not translate to the real world when I graduate? Am I going to be unhappy or not as good at things?" And bridge is the first time where I felt like this is not classroom studying and I'm learning so much, so fast. Everyone that I meet wants to help me learn more, which has been incredible to any extent that they have that ability. There's no guardrails. If I want to learn at an insane pace, I can do that. And I'm so grateful that I'm going to have that for the rest of my life. But I love bridge and I want to spend a lot of time on it, and I want to try really hard at it, and I'd like to get better as fast as I can because that's more learning, and I love that.

John McAllister: And I think for me, that's attractive. I love that you have that, and I love that you want to learn and you want to play with me. And I've been out of town each of the first three Fridays, so next Friday we're playing the 15th of September.

Katie Sullivan: We are. Are you here?

John McAllister: Yeah, I'm here. I should be here for several weeks, maybe like six weeks. Six Fridays in a row?

Katie Sullivan: Okay, good. Well, I'm looking forward to it. It's just postmortems, they're going to drain you dry.

John McAllister: We haven't done the postmortem from when we played in the speedball the other day by the way. We only postmortemed one hand.

Katie Sullivan: We postmortemed one hand.

John McAllister: I thought there were some points that we should cover.

Katie Sullivan: Okay, well, maybe we can do that after this.

John McAllister: We won't do that on you guys.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah, no, I love the postmortem. It was actually really funny to me because I mean, I guess, I don't have that much context for what people normally do in a really competitive scenario like nationals. But I played with William Hahn in the 0 to 6,000. Whatever was happening at the same time as the Life Master Pairs, that was also high level, but you didn't have to be a life master because I am not. And the way I would postmortem after those was... I mean, I thought that everybody would have their hand records out and also be crazy postmorteming, and a lot of people weren't, and I mean, whatever. I just kept asking whoever I went out to lunch with questions the entire time and right up until the next set started.

But I love the postmortem. I mean, that's when you get to ask questions. Sitting at the table and trying to figure out things on your own, it can be really rewarding like when you can sit at the table and tell yourself, I really care about every single hand. I'm going to try to keep perfect count. I'm going to soak up every piece of information, not let it go, not drop it. I'm going to know the end position. Those are great times, and obviously you learn so much from those, but I really love asking questions because I think the point where I am in my bridge learning trajectory, that's where I get the most.

John McAllister: I mean, there are people that are way beyond me in bridge, but I don't think it stops. I think that's one of the great things about bridge is the opportunity to talk about the game and to learn from people that have more experience. And sometimes it's so obvious to them, but that's how we learn and sometimes it can be frustrating, the postmortem, you want your thing to be right, and then people are like, "No," that sucks. But sometimes you do something better than the better players, and that's what makes bridge a good game, is that it's not a game of perfect information. Anything else, any areas that I did not cover that I should have asked you about? I have a bet with Georgio Casanovi, who's the faculty mentor for the Georgia Tech program. We've got a-

Katie Sullivan: Oh, gosh.

John McAllister: ... significant bet about UVA winning Collegiate Bowl, and I think next, I think it was 10 years-

Katie Sullivan: So it's 10 years done.

John McAllister: ... so I think we've got eight years left on that.

Katie Sullivan: So done. No, seriously. I mean...

John McAllister: This is bulletin board material for the other schools, by the way. They're going to be listening to this.

Katie Sullivan: No, I mean, look, not that I have an incredible handle on Georgia Tech and their scene. I mean, I don't, but UVA bridge is going to be really big. The way that we are progressing is incredible. The rate at which people are getting better and how many people care and how much they care about bridge is incredible. It's more than just a bridge club. It's like a social club. Actually, our social chair committee, whatever that I was talking about earlier, so some of them are doing the social media, some of them are planning socials, and we've got running club mixers, UVA trumpets mixers. You've got Mug Night, which is like you make cakes in a mug or something. I have no idea.

But there's a lot of that going on. It's going to be really cohesive and really big, and a lot of these kids are really interested in becoming better. Even some of these kids who I've just taught in the past couple of weeks, I can tell some of them are going to get really into it because they're just the kind of person that they're really well suited to bridge. I can tell they've already got the bug, but I mean, I don't know. Do you know how old Bruce Zhu is?

John McAllister: Yeah. Well, he is under 21.

Katie Sullivan: Is he my age?

John McAllister: I don't know.

Katie Sullivan: I'm under 21.

John McAllister: He's at Georgia Tech. Is anybody telling you to pump the brakes on bridge?

Katie Sullivan: Pump the brakes? No.

John McAllister: Nobody's like-

Katie Sullivan: Look, maybe, I mean, okay, well, I will say this. So for example, Cade's mother, the impression that I've gotten at least is that she wants to make sure that he's focusing on his studies and not spending all his time playing bridge. And I mean, my parents have never... I mean, they're incredible parents. They're not really worried about what I'm doing.

John McAllister: I mean, you're so happily doing it.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah.

John McAllister: I mean, it's got to be exciting. It's exciting for me, but I'm a bridge player.

Katie Sullivan: I mean, most people think it's really cool, honestly.

John McAllister: Yeah. That's true.

Katie Sullivan: I don't need a party trick because I just say the word bridge and everybody instantly thinks I'm cool. No, everybody I talk to about it is just really interested by it, and it's not like the kind of the way that I'm interacting with it, because I'm not going to lie, there is a lot of holing up in my room and studying, playing speedballs and postmorteming with people and just playing all the time the way I can get it, which there's a lot of online. But I'm also making very real stuff that has real consequences and UVA bridge, like Hoos Playing Bridge. That's an incredible, I'm really proud of that. I honestly think that that's probably the thing that I'm proudest of in my life. I can't even believe that I started something and it's become this, and we still have two more years to grow. But I mean, watch, we're going to have like eight UVA kids in USBF by the end of the year, and we're going to take two full teams-

John McAllister: That'd be amazing.

Katie Sullivan: ... to Toronto, and I mean, they're both going to qualify. No, but...

John McAllister: Tell us about winning the Board a Match.

Katie Sullivan: Oh my God, what a funny event. Yeah, so I mean...

John McAllister: Who's on your team?

Katie Sullivan: The Board a Match Team. It was basically our team.

John McAllister: All six.

Katie Sullivan: Well, except that Katie Wong had to leave early after we didn't Q, because her family was also in Europe. And so, she had to leave, and somehow we convinced Jacob Freeman to play with us. I have no idea how we managed that, but we did, which was incredible. He played with Cecilia Erlichman instead of Katie, and they just had a total pickup partnership. But I mean-

John McAllister: Who did Morgan play with?

Katie Sullivan: Morgan played with Jessica.

John McAllister: Jessica, okay. Got it.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah.

John McAllister: And you all just rolled them. Did you win by a lot? Were you surprised? How many days was the event?

Katie Sullivan: I think it was three, but, Khan and I didn't play the last day. But it was definitely a funny kind of thing. I told Jacob he needed to update his Bridge Winners and put that as his proudest accomplishment or whatever the prompt is. Take down the picture of him and what's his name? The kid from the Netherlands.

John McAllister: Steve Brant.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah.

John McAllister: Winning the gold medal.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah, replace it with.

John McAllister: Okay, last question or last topic. You want to start a tournament at UVA for the other Collegiate teams.

Katie Sullivan: Collegiate tournament.

John McAllister: Yeah.

Katie Sullivan: Yeah. Okay, so having youth in the bridge world, this is something that's really important to me. I'm proud of what I've done at UVA. I want there to be a collegiate club, but I don't think a collegiate club in and of itself brings youth into the bridge world. That's part of why I'm trying to get kids to go to locals and go to nationals. But there definitely is some level of... I mean, my favorite part of nationals was definitely being able to connect with other kids who played bridge across the country who are my age. That was a really big draw. I don't know if I would've loved it as much if I had gone to play with people much older than me. But I think there can be kind of a baby step, which would be something like hosting a UVA collegiate tournament. Especially, the reason that I started thinking about this in the first place a while ago was because a lot of these other clubs have way bigger spending budgets than we do.

They have tens of thousands of dollars, so they have much more ability to travel than we do, and trying to get to those collegiate tournaments, it's going to be hard no matter how many people we try to bring or what we try to coordinate, we're going to have to definitely work to try to make all that travel happen, but maybe these other clubs have some more ability to do that than we do. Also, UVA is just incredible. Charlottesville is one of the best places I've ever lived. I love it. And people would have so much fun if they came and spent a weekend in Charlottesville. It's like UVA is the most joyful, most wonderful place to be.

John McAllister: Seriously, when are you thinking? What's your target date?

Katie Sullivan: Well, so if Georgia Tech does a spring thing, maybe I'm going to have to get a better sense from the community, like talk to some of my network of bridge club presidents across the country. But if they do a spring thing, I feel like fall 2024 gives us a lot of time to plan it, to get it set in place, still be able to have an announcement at Toronto.

John McAllister: And you'll go to Georgia Tech and see what that's like in February.

Katie Sullivan: Hopefully, yeah.

John McAllister: Yeah. We're going to make that happen. That's going to happen.

Katie Sullivan: Okay. I mean, good. It's happening and we're going to beat them. Does that count? Does that fulfill your bet if we beat them at their own tournament?

John McAllister: No. You need to win the Collegiate.

Katie Sullivan: No, it'll happen. I can't promise that it'll happen while I'm here, but I hope that I'm setting up something that has a lot of longevity, not least because John, one of my favorite things about going to the Netherlands was all of the youth from the US that I met who are younger than me, most of them still in high school, most of them younger than my sister, which I mean, their composure was very impressive for how young a lot of them were. I want all of them to come to UVA. They should, I mean, I can't express how much UVA has been one of the most incredible experiences ever. I'm so happy I'm here, and if you're a junior in the bridge world, if you are interested in going to school at UVA, come, I will make sure you have the best experience possible.

John McAllister: Come visit before.

Katie Sullivan: Come visit.

John McAllister: Come visit, check it out.

Katie Sullivan: Definitely. Oh, that would be my biggest advice about college too.

John McAllister: I got basketball tickets, come for a basketball game. We'll take you to a basketball game. It's a recruiting trip.

Katie Sullivan: And then eventually you can take over UVA bridge and you can help John win his bet because-

John McAllister: It's only for a dollar.

Katie Sullivan: It needs to be done. Well, I mean, these are high stakes.

John McAllister: Yeah. I knew I had to go to UVA because I had a friend who's a year older than me, and I would come visit and hang out with him at his fraternity, and I'm like, "I got to go there. That's the place I want to go school."

Katie Sullivan: Well, I mean, yeah. I've got the sorority.

John McAllister: Boom, boom. All right. So fall 2024 UVA Collegiate Tournament. We got a lot of stuff on the horizon. I'm so happy that you're in Charlottesville, that we're friends, that we're playing on the 15th, and then a lot of weeks after that. And Katie's got a great article on Bridge Winners about starting a collegiate club. She's a resource for other clubs, and thanks a lot.

Katie Sullivan: Thanks for having me.

John McAllister: I'm so glad that you're here and that we're bridge partners.

Katie Sullivan: Me too.

John McAllister: All right. Bye-Bye.