Margaret Fefilava Styer
“It takes a village,” is what they say. Though usually followed by “to raise a child,” there is evidence that mounting a professional pool tournament, featuring a large contingent of world-class professional competitors takes the same kind of “village” or community effort. Though a pool tournament only lasts a few days, it takes the same amount of care and coordination, along with an earnest desire to enhance the players’ experience, as raising a child would require over a much greater length of time. A lot less room for error with a pool tournament and lot more ‘children’ to think about.
In addition to support-by-attendance on the part of a number of Colorado women, including Debbie Schjodt, Carina Gonzales, Holly Figueroa, Isabel Gutierrez, Rachel Bradford, and Chris Honeman, a great number of ineligible-to-compete, local citizens stepped up to help sponsor the inaugural $15,000-added, Olhausen Colorado Classic, which drew 64 entrants to Felt Billiards Bar and Restaurant in Englewood, CO this weekend (Sept. 26-29). Citizen sponsors included what was described by WPBA representatives as a “substantial contribution” from Adam Burke, who chose not to publicize the amount.
“The support from the whole community was just amazing,” said Samm Diepp Vidal, the house pro at Felt Billiards. “It was all hands on-deck leading up to and throughout the entire weekend event.”
“It’s been a dream of mine for over a decade to bring a women’s professional event to Colorado,” she added. “Of course, at the time I began to dream this, I was imagining it as an event at which I would be participating. That did not happen, of course, but being a part of it has been just as rewarding for me, to bring this event here for my pupils and ladies in the Colorado pool community.”
As for the ‘child’ that the ‘village’ raised, the inaugural Olhausen Colorado Classic caused a bit of shuffling in the WPBA rankings. The shift(s) can be traced to a time preceding the Iron City Invitational in July and the results of the Palmetto Billiards Invitational, last month in South Carolina. Prior to the Iron City event, Kelly Fisher and Tzu-Chien Wei had held something of a grip on the women’s tour, way ahead in ranking points for quite some time.
They both missed the Iron City Invitational, which gave Kristina Tkach (who won it), Margarita Fefilova (runner-up), Allison Fisher (3rd), April Larson (4th) and others a window of opportunity to close the points gap separating them from Kelly and ‘Wei-Wei.’ That opportunity turned in to two opportunities when Wei-Wei did not compete in South Carolina (dropping to #6 in the rankings) and Kelly finished 4th, behind Allison Fisher, Kristina Zlateva, and Tkach. Those two occurrences moved Tkach into 1st place in the rankings with Kelly in 2nd place. This past weekend, Kelly and Wei-Wei were absent again, moving Kelly from 2nd to 4th, while Wei-Wei managed to maintain her position in 6th place.
Moving to continue the climb to higher positions on the WPBA ranking ladder this past weekend were (among others) Tkach and two women in search of their first WPBA event title, Margarita Fefilova and the female component of ‘The Killer Fillers,’ Germany’s Pia Filler. Fefilova hadn’t missed a WPBA event since May, while Filler, though not idle in the interim, was making her first appearance on the tour since June’s Soaring Eagle Masters.
Fefilova and Filler competed twice, hot seat and finals, for the Olhausen Classic title. Fefilova won both matches, handily, as it turned out. Kristina Tkach, in the meantime, who finished in the four-way tie for 9th place in Colorado managed to maintain her position at the top of the WPBA rankings. Fefilova moved up a spot (#4 to #3), as Filler moved up a few notches to #19. Kristina Zlateva, who was in 3rd place behind Tkach and Kelly Fisher after the Palmetto Invitational, moved up to #2 when she finished in third place after losing the Olhausen Classic’s semifinal to Filler.
There was other movement on the rankings, as well, but there were also notable performances and intriguing matchups that made this WPBA particularly memorable. The teen-aged winner (Sofia Mast) and runner-up (Savannah Easton) of the 2024 World Junior Girls Championship in New Zealand (earlier this month, Sept.) were on-hand to compete in Colorado, although not against each other, as they had in the finals in New Zealand (won by Mast). Mast turned in a stellar performance in Colorado and although she lost her second-round match to Monica Webb, she won five on the loss side, against Teruko Cucculelli, Dawn Hopkins, Susan Williams, Emily Duddy and eliminate the top-ranked WPBA competitor Kristina Tkach, before falling to Briana Miller. Savannah Easton did not fare as well, losing her opening match, double hill, to Nicole Keeney and winning a single match on the loss side versus Joanne Ashton, before being eliminated by Ada Lio.
Briana Miller, tour director and top competitor on the J. Pechauer Northeast Women’s Tour (JPNEWT) and Ashley Benoit (pronounced Ben-wa) have been battling back and forth on that tour for a while and though they, too, failed to ‘connect’ in Colorado, they were the two competitors who ended up in the tie for 5th/6th place, both having won their opening match, lost their second-round match, won six on the loss side and were eliminated in the seventh, loss-side round.
Monica Webb, who’s having her best year since 2022, has finished in 4th place, twice, on the past two WPBA events. This past weekend, she went through an array of multi-generational talent that included the likes of Sofia Mast (8-2), Kaylee McIntosh (double hill), and Ashley Benoit (8-5, loss side) on the younger end of that spectrum and Lisa Cossette (opening round, 8-3), Brittany Bryant (8-4) and Pia Filler (4-8 loss in a winners’ side semifinal), on the older side of the age ranges. Her bid for the title was ended in the quarterfinals 8-5 by Kristina Zlateva, also on the older side of that age range.
All that said, it appeared as though Margarita Fefilova was on something of a mission. In races to 8, she didn’t allow any of her first four competitors to get any closer than four racks, beginning with Dawn Hopkins (4) and moving on through Laura Semko (2), Joann Mason Parker (4), and Ashley Rice (2) to arrive at a winners’ side semifinal against Zlateva. Filler, in the meantime, didn’t give up more than three prior to her winners’ side quarterfinal. She got by Chris Honeman (2), Janet Atwell (3) and Veronique Menard (2), before running into Kristina Tkach, who chalked up five against her. She advanced to face Monica Webb in the other winners’ side semifinal.
Fefilova got into the hot seat match with an 8-6 win over Zlateva and was joined by Filler, who’d sent Webb to the loss side 8-4. Filler got an early, slim lead in the hot seat match, winning her first two racks. Fefilova won the third, but Filler moved out in front, ahead by two again. They traded racks to a 4-4 tie, which seemed at that point (with the exception of the six racks Zlateva had managed), to have become Fefilova’s “no more” point. She chalked up the next four in a row to claim the hot seat.
When Monica Webb showed up on the loss side, she picked up Ashley Benoit, who was working on a fairly remarkable six-match winning streak that had eliminated, among others, Menard (double hill), LoreeJon Brown (3), April Larson (5) and Kaylee McIntosh (5). Zlateva drew Briana Miller, who’d lost her second-round match to Brown and was working on a six-match winning streak as well. That streak had eliminated Lonnie Fox-Raymond (5), JoAnn Mason Parker (4), Brittany Bryant (double hill) and Sofia Mast (6). These two matches set up a potential quarterfinal between Miller and Benoit, who’d been facing each other off and on (including a few finals) over the past two years on the JPNEWT.
It didn’t happen. Webb got into the quarterfinal with an 8-5 win over Benoit, as Zlateva was busy eliminating Miller 8-6. Zlateva then eliminated Webb 8-5 in those quarterfinals.
Zlateva and Filler then fought a spirited, double-hill semifinal to earn a shot at Fefilova, waiting for one of them in the hot seat. Filler dropped the final 9-ball and shortly thereafter, the match between two women looking for their first WPBA title got underway.
It was perhaps a sign of what was to come when Fefilova won the lag, dropped three on the first break and ran the table for a 1-0 lead. Filler broke the second rack and dropped one, but she turned the table back over to Fefilova, who eventually finished the rack to go up by two. She then broke the third rack and ran that table to go up by three.
Filler responded with her first break and run, at which point they traded racks to 4-2. But Fefilova came right back to go ahead by three again. Filler broke and ran again to pull back within two, but once again, Fefilova brought it back to a three-rack lead at 5-2.
Filler broke dry, but regained the table to, for the last time, pull within two, at 5-3. It was, for all intents and purposes, over at that point. Breaking the 9th rack, Fefilova sunk three balls to go ahead by three again and then, very methodically, very calmly, won the next four racks to claim the inaugural Olhausen Colorado Classic.
Tour director Jerry Stuckart and the WPBA thanked Joseph Stewart and Adam Robertson and their entire Felt Billiards staff for their hospitality along with sponsors Olhausen Billiards, Fodor’s, Adam Burke, PoolDawg, Action Cues, Rodney, Phil & Foster (local competitors), Simonis, Aramith, Moonlighting Billiards and Jane Chalks.
The next event on the WPBA calendar, scheduled for the weekend of Oct. 10-13, will be the $10,000-added WPBA Cuespeed NAPA Invitational, hosted by Railyard Billiards and Sports Club in Louisville, KY.
1 comment