The Grand National Teams is an annual competition in which teams representing each district compete for a North American Championship in each of four categories. Popular Connecticut shoreline director and teacher tells the story of his and partner Gayle Stevens’ journey to the Flight C Grand National Teams championship at the summer 2024 NABC in Toronto.
Journey to the GNT
By Rick Seaburg
Our journey to the GNT started innocently enough. My partner Gayle Stevens had found that there was an online qualifier for District 25. For my personal health and well-being, I rarely say no to my partner. Our regular team partners decided to join us in the online event.
About a week before the qualifier, we learned that they would not be able to play. We had to scramble to try and find another pair to be our partners. After exhausting the players that we knew, Gayle contacted District 25 President Susan Miguel to see if she knew of any possible partners for us. As luck would have it there was another pair also looking for partners and Susan matched us up.
The online qualifier started off with mixed results. Due to a series of miscues, we finished the morning in the middle of the pack. But the afternoon was a different story. We won all 4 rounds to take the top spot!
We met our team captain, Jim Murphy, at the Regional tournament in Southbridge, Massachusetts in April. We hit it off with Jim right away and were looking forward to playing with him and his partner Renata Schmidt in the GNT in July in Toronto. And as the winners of the District 25 qualifier, we received a generous stipend to help with expenses.
The GNT began on July 17, the day before the rest of the tournament, and if you were anywhere in the Northeast on that day, you’ll know what that meant. Our plane was late taking off due to weather delays. When we finally landed in Toronto, we found that the train that we expected to take wasn’t running because the train tracks were flooded, and the train was stranded somewhere out in the flood. We had no choice but to stand in the long taxi line. The taxi needed to take an alternate route to the hotel and when we got into the city, the traffic was at a standstill as the traffic lights weren’t working. The taxi driver apologetically dropped us as close as he could get us and after a long walk, we both breathed a sigh of relief as we finally got to our hotel.
The search for food didn’t go much better. There was a restaurant just a couple of blocks away but without electricity, they weren’t open to serve food, so we finally contented ourselves with a park bench lunch of a couple of Zone bars and bottled water from a nearby convenience store. Fortunately, by the time we returned to the hotel, the elevator was working. We got up to our rooms and could now look forward to the games the next day.
The following morning, we found our teammates, and Jim explained that the first day of the tournament was essentially a Swiss Team event to qualify to get to the round of 16. The Flight C (under 500 masterpoints) qualifier was played in a separate room in the lower level of the convention center. We had some good luck, finishing with six wins, one loss and one tie, easily qualifying us for the second round.
The top teams got to pick their opponents for the round of 16, and we were excited at the prospect that our finish might enable us to pick our first opponents. Our excitement quickly faded as we learned that the top team, our only loss on day 1, had selected us as their opponents.
The round of 16 is an all-day match of 54 boards, 27 in the morning and 27 in the afternoon, all against the same team. Our opponents played very well which meant our GNT was over. They eventually went on to the finals where they finished second by a margin that came down to one trick!
Before heading home, we did have a lovely dinner with our teammates and their friends and family in Toronto’s iconic CN tower overlooking the city and the lake.
All in all it was an experience that we’ll never forget. The best part was not only getting to play at this level of competition, but getting to meet our new teammates and fellow players from around the world.
We would encourage any player to participate in the GNT experience!