The University of California at Berkeley soundly defeated the Georgia Tech Gold team by a score of 78–37 to win the Collegiate Bridge Bowl. The inaugural running of the Collegiate Individual was won by Andrew Rowberg from the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Berkeley edged out Columbia by 6 IMPs in the semifinal to make it to the big game where, after a 40-IMP first half, they cruised to the win.
Georgia Tech, last year’s Bridge Bowl champ, beat Harvey Mudd College on their way to the final. In the playoff for third–fourth, it was Harvey Mudd by 10 IMPs: 57–47.
Playing for the victorious Berkeley Bears were Chengwei Li, Kevin Rosenberg, Mingyang Zhou, Xinchen Zhu and Armin Askari.
Scholarships for $15,000; $10,000; $5000 and $2500 were awarded to the winning teams. Ten teams entered this year’s collegiate contest which, for the first time, was open to any university/college team – no need to qualify online ahead of time.
Rowberg, who is in the third year of a doctoral program in material science at Santa Barbara, dropped into the Individual when his squad was eliminated from the team competition. His win netted him $2000 in scholarship money. Runner-up Hakan Berk of Potomac MD picked up $1000, while Ben Kristensen, from Duluth MN earned $500 scholarship funding for his third-place finish.
Funding for the scholarships and travel subsidies for 10 teams was provided by the ACBL Educational Foundation and the ACBL.