Captain’s Log, April 3rd, 2016

The Spring Session is winding down to the end. We will be providing newsletters over several of these last few weeks of play to help keep you informed on everything league related that we possibly can. The more you know, the better prepared your team will be. This is the 4 week mark for all divisions. After this week, no teams can add players to their rosters. Teams that have a bye scheduled within the last 4 weeks cannot add a player at all. If you are adding someone who cannot reach 4 matches by the end of the session, it’s too late to add them. We do make exceptions for teams in distress, but those must be approved by the League Office before you can add them. All other Open divisions will be at the 4 week mark next week.

The team manual states that teams must remain competitive once they become qualified to compete in Higher Level Tournaments. Teams that are in the bottom half of the standings can have their City Championship eligibility removed if the league office believes they aren’t trying their best every week. We haven’t had to do this in the past, but I’m troubled by the amount of teams that are at the bottom of their respective divisions this session, which is the last session before our City Championships. We would also find it rather hard to believe a team could play so poorly in the entire Spring Session, and then have no trouble defeating teams in our tournament of the best teams of the 2015-2016 league year. Handicap manipulation is cheating and not allowed. Severe disciplinary action can take place for any team found guilty of doing so. If your team is within a reasonable amount of points of the playoffs, this shouldn’t be of major concern to your team. Qualified teams that are way down towards the bottom with no hope of making playoffs are the teams we are watching closely. Skill levels will be heavily scrutinized for those teams before the City Championships. We pride our league area on keeping score properly and reporting skill level manipulation of any kind to keep our league free of this form of cheating. We welcome all written forms of skill level complaints from our teams and members to help us stay on top of what can become a real poison to our league if it is ignored.

The Spring Regional held at Locker Room on March 5-6 qualified 2 players from San Diego to compete in the APA Poolplayer Championships in April. Marakai Fellows and John “LJ” Pasquarella each qualified for the Championships in both the 8 Ball and 9 Ball formats. Congratulations to both players and good luck at Nationals later this month. Also competing in the Showdown Series 8 Ball Doubles Championships are Eric “Sunshine” Shaw and Shawn Donahue and Phil Oh and Jay Roach. Berna Bauer and David Seymore will be competing in the 9 Ball Doubles Championships.

The 2016 8 Ball Southwest Challenge Tournament was pretty great for San Diego. Our league area took 1^st, 2^nd and one of the 3^rd place finishes in the 197 three person team 8 Ball event. Clint Palaci, Cathy Barnhill and Autumn Moody were the team that won first place and $3599.00 in prize money. They beat Trishia Beaty, Ray Borduin and Brian Taylor in the finals. Trishia’s team won $2400.00. The 3^rd place team was Larry Glick, Shawn Liles and Griffen Callahan. In the 9 Ball Doubles SWC tournament, Rhianna Stoa and Adam Leon finished in 3^rd place and Kellen Kerns and Domingo Vasquez got 5^th place. Westage Casino was extremely pleased with our turnout for the event and we locked up 3 more years at this location for our Spring and Fall Southwest Challenge events. The next one will be October 13-16. We will have a 3 person 9 ball tournament and a Scotch Doubles 8 Ball tournament. Both events will likely be limited to 128 teams, so we are probably looking at slots assignments and limits for both tournaments. Teams can sign up for both events, but unique teams will have first priority for slots. Unique being that no one on a team is signed up for both events.
  

Make up matches must be done before the last two weeks of the session. Anything within that two week time frame must be approved by the League Office, and we are not going to be very friendly with handing those out this session. Teams count on the standings to be as accurate as possible so they know where they stand. It’s important for us to respect this rule and only allow a makeup under the most extreme of emergencies. Thanks for your understanding. Good luck the rest of the way. Some teams will win their divisions or make playoffs. Others might have to rely on the wild card, but remember to make good sportsmanship the most important part of your league experience. If you don’t win this time, remember there is always next time!

Shoot Pool Good!

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