Unit 490 and Unit 477 battle for Mid-Valley dominance

By Kevin Kacmarysnki

For the last decade, Unit 477 (Albany/Corvallis) and Unit 490 (Salem/McMinnville) have participated in at least one challenge match every year for bragging rights and possession of a travelling trophy.  While this was paused during the COVID years, 2023 marked the return to a two-matches-a-year format.  Unit 477 won the match hosted earlier this spring in Corvallis, so Unit 490 was looking for their turn to claim victory in the second leg of the year held in Keizer on August 6. As is typical for Salem First Sunday Unit games, the day started off with a mini-lesson from Kevin Kacmarysnki at noon.  Less typical was the ballroom full of people at 12:30 for a celebration of life for longtime Salem-area player and director Gayle Goodman-Wilkins, who passed away earlier this summer. Gayle was a Mid-Valley bridge legend as both a player (Gold Life Master) and as an administrator, directing most of the games at the Salem Bridge Club and keeping the education program rolling for junior players seeking to improve their skill. With people coming to the game in droves, both for the celebration for Gayle and for the Unit vs Unit challenge, this was the largest game Salem has hosted in many years.  A 14-table Open Game combined with an 8-table 499er game led to 22 total tables, nearly evenly split between the two Units.  Unit 490 sends out its gratitude to local players coming out for one of the first times since COVID as well as players from Corvallis and Albany who made the trip up I-5 to participate. The competition for the Unit vs Unit championship was fierce. The trophy calculations were determined by taking the top three scores from each Unit across each stratification – strats “A” and “B” from the Open game and strat “C” from the 499er game.  Unit 477 won strat “B” by nearly 5 percentage points and Unit 490 won the limited game by almost 3 percentage points.  With strat A being almost a dead tie, Unit 477 triumphed on the day 499.64 to 497.63 in possibly the closest result ever in the series.  Congratulations to our southern guests and just wait ’til next year! Top Finishers -Open game: 1A Carol and Dennis Harms 2A Tom McGuire & Kevin Kacmarynski 3A 1B 1C  Henri Jansen & Robert Tyler   Top Finishers – 499er game: 1D Bryon Van Fleet & Rich Turnbull 2D Mike Fagan & Ann Teal 3D Karen Crooch & Doug Reed