District 8's newest national champions

Congratulations to Peter Yeh, Yewen Fan, Ziyang Liu and Brad Sevcik who were the winners of the 2016 Collegiate Bridge Bowl. They represented the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Seventeen college teams entered the qualifying rounds on Bridgebase Online. The UI team was one of four that advanced to the national finals, held at the Washington DC national tournament on July 23 & 24.

Three of the four teams in the semifinals were from the state of Illinois. The Fighting Illini beat the University of Chicago in the semifinals and UC-Berkeley in the finals. Northwestern University, which placed third, was the other team in the final four.

This is the third national college championship for the University of Illinois. In 1988, Justin Graver, Dennis Carney, Brian Blackmore and Michael Steigmann won the North American College Team Championship. In 1963, Bob Ewen & Darrell Penrod won the North American College Pairs.

In addition to the trophies and ACBL travel award, the winners received a total of $20,000 in scholarships. Well done!