We’re off to an unusually strong start after the first four days of the summer 2026 NABC in Minneapolis.
GNT Round Robin Victories
First of all, the Grand National Teams in all flights kicked off the first day with a team photo shown below, then proceeded to dominate each of their respective flights. Team Frean in Flight A, Team Jonas-Silver in Flight B, and Team Long in Flight C all won the qualifying round robin swiss, giving themselves choice of opponent in the first KO (amusingly, a practice we eliminated at the local level. In the Championship Flight, Team Rothstein took 5th place out of 25 districts, well above average among qualifying teams. It’s safe to say no district in the history of GNTs has ever had such a strong start in all four flights!
Life Master Pairs and mini-LM Pairs Finalists
Moving into Session 5 and 6 of the von Zedtwitz Life Master Pairs, Andrew Rosenthal and Zachary Grossack are in the leading carryover position! Of course, with 78 qualifying pairs, it is still anyone’s game. Over in the Bruce Pairs, in the top five qualifiers include Mark Blanchard and Amy Rhodes. And for the 0-3000 micro LM Pairs (aka Young Pairs), we have Dan Small and Lloyd Mandell.
Current D24 LM:
Andrew Rosenthal / Zachary Grossack
Joel Wooldridge / Kent Mignocchi
Margie Cole / Alejandro Bianchedi
Jacqueline Chang / Iulian Rotaru
Michael Lipkin / David Gurvich
Avery Silverstein / Aaron Silverstein
Lucy Zhang / David Soukup
Uday Ivatury / Christal Henner
D24 mini-LM Pairs Finalists:
Mark Blanchard / Amy Rhodes
Dan Small / Lloyd Mandell
Nancy Marshall / Bill Sigward
Melanie Appelbaum / Gina Davanzo
Cynthia Ogden / Jeffrey Schwartz
GNT Finalists in Flights B and C!
We have had unusually great results in the national finals of the GNT in recent years. Last year in Philadelphia Team Miniter won the entire Championship Flight national finals, with Team Li reaching the finals in Flight C as well. A few years prior in Chicago 2023, Team Jonas-Silver and Team Silverstein faced off in a subway series D24 Flight C national finals for 1st and 2nd place. This year, Jonas-Silver returns with identical roster as serious contenders for Flight B. And Team Long in their first GNT national finals is a finalist in Flight C. We wish them all good fortune!