Welcome to Spring 2025!

I love this time of year, when plants and trees begin to bloom and the days get noticeably longer. In March, I attended the ACBL Board of Directors meetings in Memphis, Tennessee. It was a great place for the smaller, 13-member ACBL Board of Directors to meet because the ACBL Headquarters is located just 15 miles away in Horn Lake, Mississippi. We took advantage of this location by holding the first day of our meetings at ACBL Headquarters. We toured the facility (and the amazing Bridge Museum) and proceeded to be introduced to ACBL staff in each department. There was an atmosphere of, “I am proud to work for ACBL and I am happy to be here providing the best service possible.” It was truly a pleasure to see staff I have met previously and to meet many other staff members I have only interacted with by email or telephone call. I left the day thinking that Bronia Jenkins has assembled an amazing team.

I hope you have noticed the change in the ACBL logo for 2025. This year marks 100 years of Contract Bridge. Efforts are underway on several fronts to increase membership so we may grow over the next 100 years. I am serving on an ACBL Ranking Rewards Task Force which is looking for ways to incentivize players to continue to work on attaining higher bridge ranks. Patty Tucker is at the helm of a program called Jump Start Bridge which is bringing learning bridge to the curriculum of gifted middle and high school students. The entire ACBL Board of Directors is examining our tournaments from the number of tournaments scheduled each year to the events scheduled at these tournaments to the number of directors assigned to each tournament.

A link to the 2025 Spring National Board Report is here, which contains many more topics that were discussed at our Memphis Meetings. If you have any questions or comments after reading this report, please contact me at jackiezayac@gmail.com.

Enjoy Spring!

Jackie Z