Paul Duncan began running games on the Norman campus while he was a student here sometime during the late 1950s. More information on that time period may be added later.
Melba Clark and Arline Krimsky ran the metro area's only Tuesday night games at the Student Union for a number of years. At least one person has told me about a Norman sectional, but I have not found any history of that either.
The modern incarnation of the club started in 1993, when five students, living in what was then called Honors House--Joe Allen Miller, Paul Lindgren, Mitch Parks, Eric Bell, and Vanessa Hedrick--organized the bridge club on campus. They made a brief attempt to organize a structured game on campus but games were mostly held informally. Other students, including Keith McIlhaney, Zengbiao Qi, Ray Mears, Brian Cross, Jeff Mason, Steve "Barbecue Lord" Williams, Amie Croy, Tony and Tavia Armstrong, Brian Feller, and probably others I've forgotten, dropped by as they could.
Interest in the club gradually died down as members graduated, and Eric, Joe Allen, and Paul were also involved in the fledgling OU academic team, which would occupy more and more of their time as it continued its stratospheric rise into the national Top 5 during the early to mid 1990s. By 1996, Eric Bell was the only player left from the original group.
After years of frustration from hearing various and sundry people in Oklahoma City promise to come down to try to organize bridge lessons on campus, Eric finally decided to do it himself and, while at the Albuquerque NABC in the summer of 1996, Eric took the ACBL Teacher Accreditation Program from Audrey Grant. Eric would start a number of abortive attempts to start classes over the next several years, most of which didn't come to much. A few hardy survivors, including Kasyap Pasumarthi, Elizabeth Anklam, Eve Pais, Andrew Waid, Chau-Yih Cheong, OU soccer coach Randy Evans, and others survived through this time.
In the summer of 1999, Eric Bell became the first member of the Sooner Unit and District 15 ever appointed to the ACBL Junior Corps, recognizing players under 26 for work in promoting the game of bridge.
In October of 2000, Eric Bell was elected to the unit board of directors as its secretary. He would be returned for two more terms in 2002 and 2004.
During the summer of 2001, Patrick Amrine and Chuck Johnson were profiled in the Tulsa World after they played in the Tulsa regional that year. Mutual friends introduced the duo to Eric and suggested they work with him on bridge on campus. They showed up that fall, realized there was no duplicate game, and promptly left.
After taking over the Monday night game in Oklahoma City in September of 2002 and building it up, Eric decided it was time to try again in Norman. OU Bridge Club received its first sanction in 2003 as a "college club," meaning it was only open to students, faculty, staff, and their dependents. It struggled that way for a while. Eventually, Eric consulted with another college-based club that averaged nearly 20 tables a night. They pointed out that although the club was only supposed to invite college-affiliated people, they didn't have to turn anyone else away. The club members dropped word that there would be a new game on Wednesday nights at the Union and gradually people started arriving. Because the club couldn't charge for games without coughing up to the University, games were run based on donations from the players who participated.
The Monday night game in the city, renamed Eric's Duplicate Bridge Club, became the Sooner Unit's first ACBL Star Club in early 2004.
That summer, Eric decided to use a new campus development--the campus-wide mass email system--to try another series of lessons on campus. Like all the previous lessons and games, it was free and supported by donations. Patrick Amrine (by his own admission) had his doubts and some of the Unit board scoffed at the idea, but the responses started pouring in by email and phone--the first one *11 seconds* after Eric sent out his email. After Eric had received almost 80 inquiries about the free lessons, the Union staff dropped the bomb on him--they only had 17 card tables. Eric and his helpers started doing their anti-rain dance hoping all the people who had inquired wouldn't show up. When 58 people showed up for the first lesson series, Eric had the last laugh.
Realizing that Eric would need help, Patrick Amrine became an ACBL certified director in the summer of 2004 and learned how to teach beginning bridge as well. That fall, Patrick started teaching his own beginning class on Monday nights. In addition, the club added two games for people who couldn't play on Wednesdays--monthly Tuesday night and Sunday afternoon games, the latter directed by Patrick. Nick Brooke and David Stewart also took the directors' test to provide additional backups for Eric and Patrick.
In February 2005 OUBC hosted the Sooner Unit's first-ever 299er Sectional in the Union. 52.5 tables played over two days, including players from Kansas, Missouri, and Texas.
In 2005, the clubs received a double honor-not only did Eric's DBC retain its Star Club status, the OU Bridge Club received two-star status from ACBL--the only club in Oklahoma ever to reach that level.
OU did away with the mass email system during this timeframe and it was not clear how to duplicate the massive success of the 2004 summer lessons. Fortunately, ACBL came to the rescue with the development of the Cooperative Advertising Program. Ads were placed in the Norman sectional of the Daily Oklahoman and public service announcements run on various Norman and Oklahoma City media. The 2005 summer lessons were not nearly as large as 2004's but were still more than respectable, vindicating Eric's free-lesson approach (inspired by a similar idea of Unit board officer Linda Hughes) once and for all.
Patrick Amrine was named to the ACBL Junior Corps in the summer of 2005.
As Patrick began the newest lesson series in the fall of 2005, Leonard Jackson of the Norman bureau of the Daily Oklahoman decided to profile the club and the growth of bridge in central Oklahoma. The resulting front-page spread catapulted the club into the public eye and led us not only to a collection of new students for lessons but also several social players who just wandered in--over the next several months.
At roughly the same time, the OU Student Association General Counsel decided that student groups could not use the term "OU" in their name without paying a licensing fee to the University. For University purposes the club was fine because it was simply known as "Bridge Club," but it had always been registered with ACBL as the OU Bridge Club. Our members voted and the OU Bridge Club became Norman Campus Bridge Club.
In December 2005 the ACBL Bulletin reprinted part of the Oklahoman article in the national magazine. It was to begin a stretch of 6 out of 7 months in which something about bridge in Norman made the ACBL Bulletin:
Patrick Amrine graduated from OU in December 2005 and left the Norman area later that spring; however, eventually the club rebounded with a slightly reduced schedule of games.
The club has continued to offer free beginning lesson programs starting three times a year. In the spring of 2006, the club put in a motion to hold an open tournament in the summer of 2006 but missed the deadline. They decided to hold a second 299er in August of 2006 and shoot for an open tournament in August of 2007 (after another successful 299er tournament during the spring of 2007). The result, the first annual Crimson and Cream Sectional, succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations. Forecast for between 75-80 tables for the 2-day weekend, the tournament turned in with a whopping 105 tables. Even more telling about the club's growth, nearly 25% of the tables at the sectional were in the 299er games, including the stunning 13 newcomer tables who turned out on Saturday afternoon. Even Oklahoma City's regional tournament that year, which has the advantage of drawing players from several states over a longer period, couldn't muster a 13-table newcomer game, and we outdrew the entire newcomer table count for the weeklong Tulsa regional in 2 days!
Eric Bell became an ACBL tournament director in August 2007. After Dorothy Derr retired due to ill health in the winter of 2008, Eric is now District 15's only active tournament director.
Jay Barron finished 2nd in the national Rookie of the Year Mini-McKenney race in 2007.
We've come long way since our founding in 1993 and our opening in 2003. We've homegrown 12 Life Masters in our club since 2003 and now hold two sectional tournaments a year. We look forward to continuing to serve the Norman community for years to come.