I suppose the metro area of Macon/Warner Robins has about 250,000 people, so I am still kind of surprised that there is as much bridge as there is here. Nine regular club games a week, including 2 novice games between the 2 bridge clubs. Probably 70 tables per week combined. I mean, this area isn't a whole lot bigger than valdosta, where there were 3 games a week with maybe 20 tables total. Anyway, a little over a month ago, my first bridge class in middle georgia ended. We started with 12 people and after 8 weeks we still had 10 people who seemed interested. 2 had already been playing in the beginner games but I am a little disappointed that I have yet to see any of the others in the club games.
I think we're going to try to offer another set of free beginning bridge classes in the fall, maybe make it more of an attempt to bring party bridge players into duplicate bridge. I'd like to get bridge in schools in houston county at some point. With engineering being such a big industry here, there should be a decent amount of interest from these engineer's kids in middle school or high school. We may have to incorporate it as part of the math team or as a little extracurricular activity geared toward those in the advanced math classes. Or maybe the could have a little elective course, where maybe 6 weeks are devoted to some different activity and bridge could be one of those. The drawback with the last option is that we would be teaching a lot of kids who have no interest at all but if we make it more of a spinoff of math team, at least we'll get kids who are motivated and more likely to be interested. I don't know. It probably won't happen until next year, but we're thinking about it. It has worked so well for Patty Tucker and Atlanta Junior Bridge that we want to try teaching bridge to kids in middle Georgia as well.
