Captain’s Log, February 10th, 2013

The extremely popular Bonnie and Clyde Scotch Doubles Tournament takes place this coming weekend, February 16-17 at the Hungry Stick. The tournament will be split in half on Saturday with half of the teams playing the morning round and the other half playing the afternoon round. The teams that survive Saturday come back on Sunday morning to find out who this year’s champion will be. The Saturday schedule and the list of teams competing will be posted to the web site on Saturday afternoon, February 9th. If you do not have internet access, please contact the league office to find out what time your team starts playing. This tournament did fill up once again, and we will be looking at options for next year on how we can extend the field so that no one has to be turned away.

We will be making MVP trophies available for pick up during the Bonnie and Clyde tournament. We are surprised by the amount of unclaimed trophies lately and we absolutely do not have the room to store them. We even had trophies left behind for players that picked up or had their patches picked up for them. Anyone on the team can pick up these trophies for their teammates, and it’s important that they get to your teammates, as there are free Singles Board vouchers that go with the trophy. This trophy might also be the first trophy your teammate ever won. If they aren’t claimed at a certain point, I have to return them. Please have someone come by and pick them up this weekend. Since Summer, MVP lists can be found on our web site by selecting Awards & Milestones from the left menu.

We are still taking sign-ups for the APA 8 Ball Southwest Challenge in Las Vegas, March 21-24. This event usually features more than 200 APA teams from all over the Southwest competing for big prize money and enjoying a long weekend in Sin City. The flyer for this event is posted on the web site. Contact the league office if your team needs an entry form.

Teams can still add players to their roster, provided they aren’t already qualified to compete in the 2013 San Diego APA City Championships, and that includes players who were dropped because they haven’t paid their membership fees yet. They do need to be paid up before you add them back, however. Be sure you have collected the membership fee from them before you play them. The team becomes responsible for the membership fee if they play without submitting membership. We remind teams about this every session and someone still has it happen to them.

Did you know? The San Diego APA is the second biggest APA league west of the Mississippi River? Portland, Oregon is the only league bigger than San Diego. Also, the skill level “3” is the most popular skill level in the 8 Ball and 9 Ball team formats. The APA started in San Diego in 1995 and has had team representation at Nationals every year. In 2002, San Diego APA’s very own “It’s Like A Nightmare” won the APA National 8 Ball Team Championships and pocketed $25,000. 4 of the 8 players on that team are still active SDAPA members today. Their team championship trophy from that event can be seen in a trophy case at the Library Cocktail Lounge on Mission Gorge in San Diego. Just a couple of facts in case anyone was interested in knowing a little bit more about the pool league they are playing in.

Scorekeeping is the second most important task for an APA team captain. The most important thing is making sure you have a team there to play. J Complete and accurate scorekeeping is vital to the success of the equalizer scoring system that APA uses for calculating skill levels. It’s actually a good idea to teach all of the members on your team the proper way to keep score and for everyone to take a turn keeping score on league night to take a little pressure off of the captain. However, it is the captain’s responsibility to make sure that whoever is keeping score of the match is doing it right. It is not acceptable to copy the other team’s score sheet, mainly because they may not be doing it right. If one team copies the other team’s sheet and the other team isn’t doing it right, we do not have an accurate reflection of what happened in the match these two teams played in, and it becomes difficult to accurately rate what they did. In order to make sure your team (yes, YOU) has an equal opportunity to win each match, we need the most accurate information for every match, every week. Any suspicious activity at the pool table should also be reported directly to the league office. There is no place for cheating in our pool league. It only takes one to ruin it for the hundreds who do go out there and play their best every week.

We thank each and every team that places the importance of accurate scorekeeping at the top of their priority list and this letter is not only a thank you to you, but a warning to anyone who doesn’t. While it is virtually impossible for the league office to be at every league match on league night to watch players shoot, it is not impossible for our league members to report to us anything that looks suspicious. We have many that do this for us already, and it never hurts to have even more. Marking defensive shots each time there is no intent to pocket a ball does the job pretty well. Score sheets don’t have to match in the safety column at all, and you don’t always have to take the word of the other team on whether there was intent to pocket a ball. Also, don’t let the other team convince you there are more innings than you know there are. 

Shoot Pool Good!