Yesterday, for those of you who missed it, was a fabulous day for pétanque. Despite a heavy fog blanketing our field in the morning, the day turned out beautifully. Cool in the morning yes, but sunny and warm in the afternoon.
Expecting a low attendance, I was surprised upon my arrival to see a sizable crowd on the courts. For our first official tournament (?) of the season, we had a great attendance. It looked like all the Bay Area clubs sent some teams.
Sacramento sent a contingent of experienced players, and Sonoma also sent strong players.
The organizers of the tournament (Noel Marcovecchio and Christine Cragg) registered 45 players but unfortunately, they are too numerous to be mentioned here. If you are curious, look at one of the photographs.
The format of the tournament was “select triplettes” and I teamed up with Francois Moser and my wife Tamara. As usual, 3 timed games were played before lunch to qualify players for the Concours or the Consolante.
I am an average player. When I play a tournament I would rather not qualify for the Concours and play in the Consolante… where my peers are. But as luck would have it, our team did well, winning 2 of our 3 games and we qualified for the Concours.
While playing the morning games, I was particularly impressed by Beth Lysten and Phominik Lee. Both are great shooters and scored a bunch of stunning “carreaux.”
After lunch, we lost our 4th game 9/13 and were out of the competition.
While a little disappointing, it gave me the opportunity to indulge in my other passion: photography.
So I spent the rest of the day taking pictures. Around 5:00 pm, I had bagged over 850 photographs. This is because when photographing sporting events, I shoot in bursts, 3 or 4 pictures at the time. Later on, I choose the bests shots for publishing.
Today I struggled to bring the number of photographs under 250.
By the way, if you want to see yourself in my photo collections, don’t dress in black. It does not photograph well.
At the end of the day, Sacramento faced Sonoma in the finals. Sacramento fielded Carmen Ellis, Tom Lee and Poe Lee.
Sonoma was represented by Barbara Hall, Kevin Evoy and Peter Mathis.
I didn’t know much about the Sacramento players, so I surmised that Sonoma would come on top. But to everybody’s surprise, the scrappy Sacramento team led by Tom Lee (the Cobra) unexpectedly defeated Peter Mathis’ team by a final score of 13/10.
Final results:
Concours
1st place: Tom Lee, Carmen Ellis and Poe Lee
2nd place: Barbara Hall, Kevin Evoy and Peter Mathis
3rd place: Christophe Sarafian, Brendan Cohen and Liza Moran
4th place: Jean-Michel Poulnot, Bernard Passemar and Mireille Di Maio
Congratulations Sacramento. You deserve it!
Consolante
1st place: Michelle Dang, Chan Xiong and Phomenik Lee
2nd place: Maggie, Rob Houghton and Tim Wetzel
I hope that you will find yourself in my photos.
Alain