Stephanie Drakulic and Molina Ortiz
Drakulic launches a fierce, nine-match, loss-side challenge to face her in the finals
It’s the nature of the beast, really. No matter how many matches a given competitor has won on the loss side of a bracket or to what extent that competitor has dominated his/her loss-side competition, the winner always gets the headline. Sometimes, a strong loss-side run can earn what’s known as a sub-headline, recognizing the work that goes into the game-by-game, sometimes ball-by-ball grind of competing with the knowledge that one more mistake could send you home.
At this past weekend’s (Aug. 16-18) stop #4 on the Northwest Women’s Pool Association Tour, Molina Ortiz went undefeated to win her fourth straight stop on the 2024 tour. The event, which marked the tour’s first event in Idaho, drew 55 entrants to The Pocket in Boise.
As Ortiz was chalking up her seven straight wins, Stephanie Drakulic launched a nine-match, loss-side winning streak in a quest to face Ortiz in an NWPA final for the second time in a little over a year; they’d battled in the finals of the tour’s second stop in June of 2023 (Ortiz defeated Drakulic 9-4 in the finals). This time out, Drakulic played 35 more games (94-59) and won 10 more games than Molina (55-45). She shut out two of her loss-side opponents and survived four double-hill matches, the last two in the event’s quarter- and semifinals and the first, in her opening match on the winners’ side. She won 70% of her loss-side games, as Ortiz was working on her 76%, winners’ side (to include finals) average. Not to diminish Ortiz’ work claiming the title, this one or the other three that she’s won this year alone on the NWPA, but Drakulic earned an extra ‘tip of the hat’ for the effort she put in just getting to the final match.
No one that Ortiz faced racing to 6 in her trip to the winners’ circle (and 9 in the final) chalked up more than 3 racks against her. She got by Leslie Jacobs (0), Kathie MacDonald (2), Suzanne Smith (2) and Maryann McConnell (3) to draw Jennifer Shumaker in one of the winners’ side semifinals. Katherine Robertson, in the meantime, was going through a roller-coaster of a trip to the same place. She opened with a shutout over Lacey Earl, gave up 3 to Julie Fraser and then, locked up in a double-hill fight versus Lona Malone before advancing. She then gave up a single rack to Nicole Donisi to draw Dora Valdez in the other winners’ side semifinal.
Ortiz advanced to the hot seat match 6-1 over Shumaker, while Robertson’s roller coaster ride continued with Valdez battling to within a game of double hill before Robertson prevailed. Robertson became the second of three to win three games against Ortiz, who claimed the hot seat 6-3.
Dora Valdez and Jennifer Shumaker arrived on the loss side and walked right into their second straight loss. Debi Hollander-Haney, who’d lost her second, winners’ side match won five straight, that included the double-hill elimination of Maryann McConnell and a 5-1 win over Tara Miller, before extending her loss-side streak to 6 matches by defeating Valdez 5-1 and advancing to the quarterfinals.
Stephanie Drakulic’s six-match, loss-side trip to meet up with Shumaker began with something of a nail-biting, double-hill win over Jordan Oakes, but Shumaker didn’t give up more than two after that. She shut out Kristin Norris to chalk up her 5th loss-side win and gave up two to Nicole Donisi to draw and then eliminate Shumaker 5-1.
Seven down and two to go. What Drakulic didn’t know (probably for the best) was that both of the next two matches would bring her to the brink of elimination. She fought and won a double-hill match to defeat Hollander-Haney in the quarterfinals and then, defeated Katherine Robertson, double hill in the semifinals.
According to the digitalpool.com bracket, the wait for Molina Ortiz after the hot seat match on Sunday night, amounted to about an hour and a half, but it wasn’t anywhere near as perceptually long as the hour and half that Drakulic had just spent, battling for just the chance to compete in the final. Ortiz closed out her undefeated run to her fourth 2024 NWPA title with a 9-3 win in those finals.
The tour also ran a 16-entrant, Second Chance event, which was won by Kathie McDonald, who shut out Gwen Townsend in the battle for the hot seat. Townsend returned from a win over Juli Bloom in the semifinals and put up a more of a fight in the finals, though McDonald prevailed a second time to win her Second Chance.
Tour representatives thanked Heather and Wayne Earl for hosting the tour’s first (and presumably not the last) trip to The Pocket in Boise, Idaho, and official tour sponsor Littman Lights. The next stop on the NWPA Tour, scheduled for the weekend of Sept. 21-21, will be hosted by Legacy Billiards in Spokane, WA.
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