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Days before Thanksgiving, a local veteran service organization known as The American Legion Post 324, hosted their first-ever spades blowout tournament in Sardis, bringing community members and legion members together over a deck of cards.

Since the game of Spades is so well-known in the Sardis community, the local post decided to turn the interpersonal game into a public event that was held at the Sardis Community Center to bring forth a bit of camaraderie while providing a safe haven, two things Vice Commander Darius Bettis said the AL Post 324 actually does within their organization.

“It was actually the first of its kind,” said Bettis. “It was also a way to give a lot of the members within the community a chance to showcase their card playing and their love for the game of Spades.”

The games started out with various groups of people split into teams of two, resulting in four players per game within each group and according to Bettis, various tables were set up throughout the community center for the event.

“We also had certain post members who served as judges for the games, establishing rules and guidelines that were given to each player. Each game would terminate at 300 points. Whoever got to it first, the prevailing team would have to be able to beat three to four of their challenges in a game and then, they would go on to be the ultimate winner of the trophy, landing in first place for this spades card blowout tournament.”

The winners of the AL Post 324 tournament were Dr. Ronald Peoples, who is actively a legion member of Post 324 and Emma Freeman, who is a member of the community that came out to support the organization’s efforts to bring the community together.

“We had a nice time,” Bettis said. “The weather cooperated and we are continuously looking for ways to interact and engage with the community more and this event was just one of the things that we came up with.”

Bettis said since the legion did have such a good turnout with the tournament and a successful food drive to help the legion with upkeep and activities, they are actively having discussions at the post about redoing the event sometime next year.

“All we’ve trying to do is increase the awareness of the post and to get the post more active in the community and in the past, we have sponsored mentoring programs where we’ve gone to various junior high schools including regular high schools during a pristine time of the day to talk to the youth, especially the young men and to discourage them from getting off the path of safety and righteousness and just be kind of a big brother mentor to them to help mold and shape the minds of these young people.”

Bettis said Post 324 has various thoughts and upcoming ideas that they would like to see come to fruition in the new year to spread awareness about their post and to actively continue to shine bright within the community.