It is with a great deal of pleasure for the Warner Robins Bridge Club to nominate Ruth Suggs for the Good Sportsman of the year award.  Ruth has been playing duplicate bridge since 1998, playing at the Warner Robins and Macon Bridge Clubs. 

 

In March 2003, Ruth was elected a manager of the Warner Robins Bridge Club.  Even though the club is relatively small compared to many other clubs in Unit 114, there is the same responsibility for small and large clubs – keeping the club functioning for those who wish to play and enjoy bridge.

 

 It was quite a learning experience for Ruth, but with the help of the club members and her husband, Harpe, she took on this new task with a vengeance.  Since Ruth was already heading the Partnership Committee, she continued that job also.  Scheduling game directors for each session was one of her first tasks.  All present and former game directors readily came on board.  Special games were identified and scheduled.  The monthly report to ACBL was also one of the newest and most important parts of the new job and she has done a great job getting these reports in accurately and timely.  She also coordinated all club activities and represented the club in contractual agreements with the Senior Center. The Treasurer’s job was also under the manager’s job description and included setting and collecting the games fees for regular and special games, purchasing concessions, office supplies, game supplies and paying bills.  A computerized accounting system was developed and a treasurer’s report was presented bi-monthly to the Board of Directors. She also gathered all newsletters published by the club since 1996 and placed them in a binder for historical preservation.  These documents will eventually be placed in the local library for genealogy research.  Ruth ensured that the club newsletter was continued by the club and contributes monthly information to the document.  She also E-mails copies of the newsletter to members who do not attend regularly.  Shortly after becoming manager, she encouraged the club to maintain a web site set up by one of the club members.  This web site lists the winner of all games and is entered on the site immediately after each game so members can access the scores at home.  Recently, the monthly newsletter was added to the site.

 

One of the urgent tasks facing the club in early 2003 was an update of the by-laws.  As part of the by-laws revision committee, Ruth completely revised the by-laws, sent proposed revisions/changes to all members, collected and incorporated these recommendations, obtained final comments and presented the revision document to the full membership in December 2003. Ruth said this was truly “a labor of love.”

 

Ruth also inherited a situation that has been a definite handicap for her.  The bridge club plays at the Senior Citizens Center.  The center does not allow participants (players) under the age of 50.  Even though a majority of our players are over 50, this restriction caused us to lose some of our most dedicated players.  The attendance of the remaining players jumped up.  We had 826 tables in 2002 and in 2003 the tables increased to 963.5 for an increase of 137.5 tables which equates to 550 players.  Even though the “invitational” status reduced masterpoints to our players to 80% of the “open” club rate, they took this in stride and really supported the club.  Even with the restrictions, in March 2003, enrollment increased by seven.  In 2004, an additional ten members signed on. 

 

Ruth truly wanted the club to grow.  She expended every effort to find another place to play or to persuade the city leaders to allow some leeway in their rules regarding the age restriction.  We feel that her patience and diplomacy have paid off.  The city leaders have offered to assist us in finding a new and better location.  We have high hopes in our community leaders and feel they are behind us one hundred percent.  If a new location is obtained, Ruth will have a lot of work to make this transition.  However, we firmly believe Ruth will get us through this as well as she did in making the transition of a new manager. 

          

As she had said many times, her main goal is to provide a pleasant atmosphere for our players.  Her second goal is growth.  This will be a special endeavor for her at our new location.  Cooperation with our city leaders is another of her continuing goals.   All of these, we’re sure, Ruth will accomplish.  She and Harpe (who joined the group in 2000) attend most of the sectional and regional tournaments.  They try to represent our club at these tournaments by playing the type game that reflects well on duplicate bridge.  We also elected Ruth to be our representative on the Unit 114 Board.  She recused herself from the upcoming board meeting since her name is being submitted for this award.

 

Even though we did not sponsor any sectional tournaments in Warner Robins as we had in the past few years, we did co-sponsor a sectional tournament with the Macon Bridge Club.  Ruth served as the Warner Robins chairman and partnership chairman for the tournament.  It was a successful tournament and showed how well the two clubs work together.

 

In addition to her club duties, she also took the time to become a game director by attending a 3-day course in September in Marietta, Ga.  She also encouraged three others to take this course. All four became game directors.  Just recently, Ruth attended an “Easy Bridge” teaching course in order to begin bridge classes in Warner Robins. Also, she plans to regularly attend update courses for game directors.  

 

By and large, her biggest task was to keep the club together and provide a pleasant atmosphere for the players.  She has handled all of these tasks and yet maintained her composure. She is still playing at all sessions and making sure all have partners. 

 

Our club realizes how much she has done and we felt that she deserved our recognition of her hard work by unanimously selecting her as our “sportsman” of the year.  She has truly been an asset to the club even though she has been a member and

player only since 1998.  Even though we are submitting her name for further consideration within Unit 114, we are not submitting her name for further glory, we just want all of you to know her and know what she had done for us and, we feel also that this will reflect well on Unit 114.