Embracing the Michigan tradition of euchre

By Olivia Hajicek

Assistant Editor

The euchre league at Hillsdale’s American Post came together again on Thursday night after taking a week off due to the recent ice storm. The league meets at 6:30 p.m. every Thursday at American Legion Post 53. Last week eight groups played euchre, while other attendees sat at the bar or talked over food.

League member Mary Rogers said the group used to play euchre often but took a break due to COVID-19. “It’s fun to hear everybody laughing and talking, especially after not being able to come for a couple of years,” Rogers said.

Rogers said she has been playing Euchre since she was a little girl.

“My mom was a big card player, so we played cribbage. I learned to count by learning to play cribbage when I was four,” she said. “I’ve been playing cards a long time.”

Rogers said the league helps to raise money for the American Legion Auxiliary, which is open to female family members of soldiers and veterans in the American Legion. Some of the money will also pay for a special dinner after the league’s eight weeks of games.

“We play for eight weeks, and then we’ll have a dinner, and then we’ll play progressive euchre after we have our dinner,” Rogers said.

In progressive euchre, the winners of each game stay at their table, while the losers move to the next one, according to Rogers.

Euchre is played in two teams of two, with players on the same team sitting across from each other. Each player has five cards and lays down one in each turn (or “trick”). Whichever team lays down the highest-ranking card

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wins the trick. One suit in each round, called the “trump suit,” is the most powerful. After five tricks, when all the cards have been played, teams earn points depending on how many tricks they won in that round. Whichever team scores ten points first wins the game.

League member Leisha Taylor described euchre as a Michigan classic.

“I told my kids when they were little that they had to learn euchre to live in the state of Michigan, and if they didn’t learn euchre, if they couldn’t play euchre, they would be deported to Ohio,” Taylor said, laughing.

Sometimes a team gets “euchered,” which means they lose most of the tricks in a round even though they chose the trump suit. Whenever a team at the league gets euchred, both players have to put a quarter into the cup on their table.

League member Denny Latoszewski joked that with all the quarters they were putting in the cup, he expected prime rib for the final dinner. As the cup got heavier and heavier with quarters, fellow player Tanya “Joe” Walling joked it had better be surf and turf.

On Thursday night, there was neither, but players enjoyed Walling’s molasses cookies and lemon blueberry cream cheese croissants instead.

Walling and Taylor teamed up against Latoszewski and fellow competitor Jerry Moistner.

Walling and Moistner had competed together in the American Legion Riders’ annual chili cook-off last month, where Walling took first and Moistner took second.

Walling became distracted during the game while showing off pictures of her newborn granddaughter. She mistakenly recorded a point for another team under her own team’s name, and the other players teased her about it. Ultimately, they decided one mistake was forgivable after she jokingly tried to pawn off scorekeeping on someone else.

Competition and conversation kept some teams there until after 9:00 p.m., when the post would normally have closed.

“We started out all right, then it was downhill from there,” Latoszewski said as he and Moistner were losing the final game 8-3.

“Let’s do it Joe,” Taylor said. “Finish this game.”

Taylor and Walling ended the night by winning both that game and a majority of the games they played.

“Euchre is fun. It’s a Michigan tradition,” Taylor said. “It brings people together.”