I remember the first time I became aware of the sport of billiards. I was captivated from the start. I was only a child, in grade school. Our math teacher entertained us with a movie about geometry. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck played pool on a big green table. The commentator explained angles and fractions and all kinds of mathematical relationships illustrated by the loveable cartoon character’s billiard shots. There was something special about the way those beautiful colored balls could be sent spinning around from one rail to another and actually land where they were supposed to. It seemed like magic! I never forgot it.
My Love affair with billiards sprouted when I was a teenager. My best friend’s dad had an eight foot table in the play room. He and his sons would piddle around with the game. I suppose it was a male bonding thing. Meanwhile my friend, the only daughter, was excluded because they said, “pool is for men”. Of course this attitude just made us more curious about the game and we took any opportunity to mess around with the “men’s game” when no one was looking. We carefully replaced the sticks, chalk, and balls when we were done so her dad didn’t think we had become too masculine for his tastes.
When I went off to college, half way across the country, my friend went with me, just so she could escape from home. We got an apartment just blocks from the college and I spent all my time there, rather than in the dorm. Being recently freed from the yoke of parental supervision, we did what any other almost legal young’ins would do, and took to hanging out at the local honky-tonk. It was cool, dark, had cold beer, and a few pool tables.
It was there we met a bunch of brothers, recently released from the army and pretty darn good at the game of pool. I learned that the army will teach you how to play pool, because every rec center has tables. I quickly caught on to the basics- how to hold the stick and make a few balls. The bar, and then with the brothers tutorage, the pool halls became my home away from home. They were a haven from the heat of the southwest back when air conditioning was a luxury that none of us could afford.
Over the years we all drifted our separate ways, but my way always seemed to be in the direction of another pool table. When I moved another half way across the country to go to another college, I found pool had become something I could always count on. It filled the space between classes and gave me an opportunity to focus on something besides books. I also found practicing the sport to be relaxing, so it gave me a break from the stress of graduate school. There was a pool hall just moments from campus where I led an alternative life away from my classmates. None of them played and that really didn’t matter, pool, after all, is the perfect solitary sport. Even when you are playing against others, you are really playing yourself. The competition is between your last best game, and your current game.
I graduated and moved again and for a time, gave up playing. Most pool players will tell you there have been spaces in their lives when they didn’t play. Sometimes spaces of years. Life happens, and jobs, kids, family stuff can tend to cut into your time for sports. Some players just get fed up with it and have to take time off. I’ve never met anyone who said they never went back to it. I found myself living in an area where there were no pool halls, and the bars were just crowded, dark and unfriendly. I took a few years off.
My next move, as luck would have it, took me straight into the arms of the most pool friendly community I had ever known. I could not have imagined it when I moved again half way across the country. I found myself a nice little apartment just a block from a library (I always look at proximity to libraries when I rent), and it turned out, just a mile from a pool hall. I got busy building my new life and found again, that pool was my close companion. I had moved to a town where I did not know a soul, I started filling my lonely time with racks of balls. I had a new home away from home, and an old love to focus on in that stressful time of starting my business.
Around that time I met two people who would change my view of pool forever. The first was a handsome pool player with a very serious game. I started hanging out watching my sweetie play and I was amazed at the depth of his game. I hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface of playing pool. I spent hours watching “money games’, and afterwards would ask “How did you do this shot?” or “Why did you make this shot?” or “Why didn’t you make this shot?”- a really important question in the real game of pool.
I also met a woman who was to become a good friend, a professional player and director of one of the leagues in town. It turned out the town was a breeding ground for female professionals and had leagues playing almost every night of the week. She encouraged me to sign up to play in a league and even hooked me up with a team willing to take on a beginner. I’m forever grateful for her kindness, and the kindness of my first team mates who encouraged me and taught me and put up with me when it was apparent I was way “out of my league’.
My first season was a complete disaster. First I showed up for league only to find it was a 9-ball league! I had never played 9-ball, didn’t even know the rules, and was certain that it took a lot more skill than 8-ball. I was so nervous I couldn’t hit a ball, and when I did hit a ball, they never went where I intended. I took a severe beating every time I played and pretty soon I was sure I couldn’t play. I was ecstatic when the season was over because although I was a terrible shot, I definitely am not a quitter and I hung in there for the entire embarrassing 16 weeks. I went home, hid my cue in the back of the closet and vowed not to show my face in a pool hall for at least a few months.
My vow didn’t stick and I was soon up early every morning to take advantage of the opening silence of the average pool hall. By then, another venue had opened just blocks from my apartment and I went every morning to practice. I was soon joined by a group of retired gentlemen who met there for coffee each morning and then wiled away their hours betting small change on a variety of pool games I had never heard of. Again, the kindness of the pool community drew me back in as the “old Guys” gave me tips on my stance, stroke and aiming techniques.
The more I learned, the more I realized I didn’t know anything and that I needed the help of a professional. I decided to get serious and made the call. The call to the guy who was teaching the female professionals in town. I set up a time to go hit some balls with him and talk about what I didn’t know. I think his first reaction to my demonstration of my abilities was “Holy Mother of God, what am I going to do with this one’, only I’m not sure because he was muttering in Spanish which, at the time, was still a foreign language to me.
After thoroughly assessing my lack of ability, he agreed to take me on as a student- with four conditions. I had to pay for a month up front, two lessons a week. I had to show up for the lessons, no misses. I had to be willing to let go of everything I thought I knew about pool, ( hey, I read Carlos Castanda, I was sure I had hit pool consciousness pay dirt here), and last but not least, I had to practice. He assured me he would know if I had not, and I knew he was telling the truth.
Agreements made, he gave me my first practice drill. Hit the ball down the rail, on each side of the table, as many times as it took to make the pocket 100 times. Sounds simple, is incredibly hard for a beginner, and makes a good bar bet, ( “bet ya can’t make this shot 3 times in a row”) because you just can’t do it if you don’t stroke straight. After a few gazillion rail shots, I was feeling like the little kid in that Karate Kid movie. When would I ever see how this seemingly mindless task was going to make me a player?
Again, I had met someone who changed my view of pool forever. I remained steadfast in my practice, up to 30 hours a week at one point, and I fell even more in love with the game. My teacher became my friend, and we remain close to this day. He challenged me to be the very best that I could be. Over the course of six years, he patiently set up thousands of shots for me, and coached me in all things pool, and a few things about life in general as well. He never wavered in his faith that I could be a great player, and his faith helped me achieve more than I thought I could.
My teacher had advised me not to play, just practice for a year. This I did, and at the end of the year one of my coffee club friends set me up with an all female 8-ball bar league team that was looking for another player. I figured I was ready to get back in the game. The team took me in like a long lost sister. I started loosing my competition jitters and started making a lot of friends. I was winning enough to make me feel like I belonged on a league and having a great time to boot.
Over the next few years our team roster changed a bit and we worked our way up the roster to become one of the top teams on the league. Meanwhile our venues seemed to be working their way down the list from friendly bar to hole in the wall in dangerous neighborhood. My last season on the league we played a team housed in a notorious biker bar, and although the team was nice enough, the guys riding bikes through the bar and the questionable activities in the restrooms became too distracting and I bailed out.
By that time, I was already playing on several “big table” leagues as well, in the much safer pool halls.
Now you might find this confusing, since pool halls tend to have a bad connotation, but honestly, in my opinion, most of the trouble in pool halls comes from people who don’t really play pool. The guys out on a Friday to hit a few balls and get stinking drunk are a problem, and they aren’t players. I’ve heard rumors as well, about late night big money games becoming something like an incident from a crime novel but I’ve never seen it myself. Overall, pool halls are safe family fun, and on league night, usually no problem. OK, I did see one good fight one night at league, but that’s one fight out of hundreds of nights of play, and I have to say, the guy deserved it!
At that point I was playing on two all female teams (including the infamous “Ball Busters”) and subbing on another, I was deeply entrenched in the pool hall scene. It was time to start playing tournaments. I started playing mixed tournaments and always ended up going home early. I was learning my game though, how to “not react” to a bad shot, how to remain calm when I was down a few games, how to remain focused between sets, how to be a kind winner and a gracious loser.
I was also making new friends, as some of the tournament players were not on leagues. I met one of my closest friends at a tournament. I showed up early to practice, I’m a slow starter, I need to warm up for a while before I play. In walks a woman I had never seen before, I was the only other woman in the hall so she sauntered over and asked if she could hit a few balls with me. I was impressed with her skills and we had a lot in common, both from the northeast originally, both with fancy degrees, and both with a Wiley dry sense of humor. By the end of the day I had asked her to join one of the all girl teams I was on. We’ve been close ever since.
The first woman’s tournament I played, I actually won. After a grueling 10 hours in the losers’ bracket of a ladies B-player 9-ball tournament, I double dipped the defending champion and walked away with the cash. Well, actually, I didn’t walk away with the cash, I donated it back to the pool organization that sponsored the tournament. I did however walk away with the official bracket sheet with my name in the top dog spot. It was worth every minute of that long day.
I was getting comfortable with competing (vs. playing) pool, and somebody noticed. I got a call from the top ladies team in town, would I like to audition for a spot. Now, usually a team forms based on friendship as much as skill. This team, however, was bound for glory and they knew it. They had a history of graduating professional players. They were looking for skill first, steady nerves second, and hopefully, friendship would follow. I got the spot, and friendship did follow. These ladies were not only some of the best players in town, but some of the nicest as well.
I was in over my head again, and I knew it. Apparently they didn’t though, and I started practicing with one of those girls (who took me under her wing- thank you!), and my game took off again. I was the weakest player on the team, but their strength pulled me forward. They advised but never criticized, they laughed at my mistakes but never unkindly. They, like my teacher, challenged me to be better than I was. Playing with these ladies really helped me to develop the confidence to start playing in the Hunter’s tournaments, part of the pro-qualifying circuit, which they all played, and where I would meet my team mates as competitors over and over.
At the end of that season, I went to
That season was the end of a long run for the ladies team, they decided (maybe?) to quit while they were ahead and we scattered to other teams. I think that may have been the first year I put together my own team.
Some teams are formed just for power, team captains invite only the strongest players. I wanted a team that was strong, but fun as well. I knew a lot of players by that time, and being pretty easy to talk to, I had a good idea of who was happy with their current team and who might be interested in switching to a new ream for the next season. I started looking for great players who were fun to be around and had winning attitudes. Of course I went to players from past teams first, and hooked up with a few great players who would remain with the team through all its incarnations.
Over the years I made a few mistakes, but when I did I made sure to change the roster before the next season. I actively recruited players during the summer break. Twice I got to the start of the season with out enough players and ended up inviting a player I hardly knew to join us, that was always risky, sometimes it worked great and that guy became one of our best and most reliable players. Sometimes it didn’t work and the person dropped out or was not asked to play again.
Occasionally I tried to steal players from other teams. I’m so darn cute and persuasive, it usually worked. I got some of our best players that way, including one really fine player who put up with me begging him every time I saw him for several months before he finally agreed to play with us. He got to the point were every time I walked up to him he rolled his eyes and tried to walk away, but I persisted and finally found a few things we had in common to build a friendship on- science, music, humor-and eventually won him over.
I think I spent five years as team captain. As a team we grew into a winning one, taking first place in our league the last two years we played together. As friends, we grew as well and I came to love everyone on that team. As team mates you support, encourage and depend on each other. We shared our lives tales, our happiness and our woes at least once a week for years. I rarely saw my teammates out side of the pool hall, none of them had ever been to my home, but I could not have been closer to them. They were my family and I think most people who play on leagues would say the same thing, their team is like family.
I’m coming to the end of this great meandering tale now, I made another cross country move and for the second time I ended up in a place with just a few pool halls, none of them friendly to ladies. I’ve decided to take a little time off, learn to write, paint a few landscapes, stuff like that. My pool cue case sits in the corner in the living room, I see it every day. I know playing pool is like riding a bike, once you know how, you never forget. I know my love affair with pool is not over, I’m just on hiatus. Some things in your life are sure. The sun is going to rise, taxes will be due, death is going to knock at your door, and for me, pool is always going to be there, to keep me company, to amuse me, to challenge me, and to lead me to great friends.
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