SFPA

In honor of election day, there will be no SFPA matches this week. Please feel free to visit one of our sponsor venues for some pool after exercising your civic duty!

Congratulations to the following players for finishing in the money in the 9-ball finals:

1st – Thayer McDougle, Pilsner InnDecisives
2nd – Tom Seymour, Happy Lounge Rawhides
3rd – JM Reasonda, Bus Stop Flyers
4th – Preston Hudson, Final Stop

We tried out a new venue, The BreakRoom in downtown Berkeley. The room opened early for us and we had the place to ourselves for most of the afternoon. Street parking was easy to find and the hall is 1 block away from the BART station. We encourage SFPA members to check it out, including a weekly tournament every Monday night.

Full results are available in the Tournaments tab of our web site.

The following four positions are up for election this season:
– Vice President (Thayer), Treasurer (Crystal), Member at Large 2 (JM), Referee 2 (Justin)

Nominations will open on October 22 and close October 29. If you are interested in running for one of these positions, please let a member of the board know.

Ballots will be emailed on November 5, with responses requested by November 12. If you have not been receiving SFPA ballots, send an email to webmaster.sfpapool@gmail.com and we will get your email address updated in our records.

Hello captains, the board hopes the season has been going well for you, your teammates, and your host venues.

Election Day schedule change
The main purpose of this message is to notify you that we have added an off-week to the schedule to align with the November 5 election night. There will be no play on November 5. We have shifted the subsequent regular season and playoff weeks forward to account for this.

Board elections
The following board positions are up for election this season: Vice President (Thayer), Treasurer (Crystal), Member at Large 2 (JM), Co-Head Referee 2 (Justin). If you or one of your teammates is interested in running for one of these positions, please contact a board member by October 29.

New tournament venue
We will be trying out a new venue for the upcoming 9-ball finals on October 27 – the BreakRoom in downtown Berkeley. This venue is a longtime billiard room that has been recently renovated and reopened. It is easily accessible by BART (1 block from the station) and there is an inexpensive parking garage nearby.

There are five remaining qualifiers for the 9-ball tournament. The $25 entry fee pays for participation in all the qualifiers and a T-shirt. Dates and times for these events are posted on the league calendar.

West Coast Challenge
This season is not a WCC-qualifying season, so the team event will be contested for pride only and the Hi-Lo and individual tournaments will have cash prizes. The upcoming Spring 2025 season will be a WCC-qualifying season, with the event set to be hosted by Long Beach in August 2025.

Shot clock
In the captain’s meeting, I made an error when talking about shot clock decisions being pegged on specific times like 8:30, 9:30, and 10:30. Rather, they are pegged on the time when each 4-game round begins. The precise language is laid out in the handbook:
– With the match starting at 7:30PM, if the first round (games 1-4) is not completed by 8:30PM (1 hour after the start of the match); captains noting when the 2nd round begins, if the round (games 5-8) is not completed within an hour of the start of round 2; captains noting when the 3rd round begins, if the round (games 9-12) is not completed within an hour of the start of the round. The shot clock shall only be imposed at the beginning of a quarter following when one of the above criteria has been met.

A match is considered “back on track” once the next round takes fewer than 60 minutes and use of the shot clock can be ended.

Thank you
Thanks for all you do for the league and good luck the rest of the season!

Full results from the West Coast Challenge in San Diego have been posted on the WCC 83 page.

The San Diego Pool League did a fantastic job organizing and hosting the event at the Sheraton Mission Valley hotel. Ten fresh Diamond tables were shipped in for the occasion. The SFPA thanks Kevin Hewitt, Ann Camonayan, and the other SDPL board members and volunteers for all their hard work in making the event happen.

Long Beach swept the awards, winning the team competition, open individuals, women’s individuals, and Hi-Lo scotch doubles. San Francisco’s Happy Lounge Rawhides held the GT Garage Hitters to a 9-4 win in the second round, which ended up being as close as the Long Beach team came to losing. Both the Rawhides and the Hi-Lo team of Kevin DeWar and Rocky Angel ended up finishing in 3rd place.

San Francisco performed strongly in the open individuals, taking three of the top eight spots. Marcelo Aviles finished 3rd, Nithin Tharakan finished 4th, and Steven Waldon took the 8th spot. Yuko Takahashi rounded out the trophies for SFPA with a 4th place finish in the women’s tournament. A number of San Francisco players also cashed in the three night tournaments – Skip Perry, Marcelo Aviles, Guy Argo, Steven Waldon, Nithin Tharakan, and Kevin Scheper (twice).

We look forward to seeing the LAPL, SDPL, and LBPL in a year’s time in Long Beach for West Coast Challenge 84!