45 women came to compete at Pool Sharks in Las Vegas, NV September 8-9,2001. 20 of these women were in contention for the WPBA Qualifier, and Ying-Ya came out on top winning the event and the qualifier. Women came from Texas, Arizona, California, Missouri, Minnesota, Taiwan, Florida, Washington, Colorado and of course Nevada.
Wes Hunter donated another beautiful Hunter Classics Custom Cue worth a whopping $2,400 this time! This spectacular cue has a tiger maple forearm with 6 ebony points, a tiger maple butt with ebony band, black and light blue veneers and stitch rings. Ebony and ivory inlays with a black with white linen wrap complemented the cue. Congratulations to Clint Smith from Westminster, CO who won the cue that everyone wanted to win.
The Hunter Classics Tour would like to thank Joe Cannella and John Kutcha who were great hosts for this event, showing the ladies a good time in their spacious pool room. The last three matches were held in the "pit" of the pool room, which was one table, on sunken ground, surrounded by four rails of fans. Thank you also to Thumbs for refereeing and Al Lawrence for running the board. Summer and Hector worked behind the bar for us ladies. And we can't forget the hard work of Susan Conlee, our local representative, who worked diligently getting the stop ready. Thanks to Debra Aarens-Cerchi, a local Las Vegas artist and great player, who donated a pool/Shakespeare poster which was won by Joe LeBeau (you can purchase the same painting in the new Meuller catalog that will be coming out soon).
After the smoke cleared on Saturday, 12 women came back for the fight on Sunday. On the winners side, Susan Mello (from Arizona) was playing Mary Olson (from Seattle) and Katie Moses (from Las Vegas) was playing Ying-Ya Lin (from Taiwan). Eventually, it would be Mary and Ying-Ya playing for the hot seat. On the one-loss side, Brenda Plantz was playing Melissa Morris (who had just come down on Saturday after playing in the Albuquerque WPBA pro event) and Kristin Haney was playing Gail Lave. The other four ladies playing on the one-loss side were Kim Shaw versus Angel Paglia and Jenny Lee versus Jean Vaillancourt. Coming in 7/8 was Brenda Plantz and Jenny Lee, coming in 5th/6th was Gail Lave and Kim Shaw. The 4th and 3rd places were earned respectively by Katie Moses and Mary Olson.
Gail Lave and Brenda Plantz went hill-hill in a match to determine not only who continued in the tournament, but also who the new Tour point leader would be. Gail Lave won the match and is now in first place by 1 point. Brenda is in second place with Leslie Rogers close behind in third.
Ying-Ya defeated Jane Fujinaga 7-5, Summer Gage 7-3, Angel Paglia 7-4, Gail Lave 7-1, Katie Moses 7-5 and then Mary Olson 7-5 for the hot seat. Ying-Ya waited for Susan Mello to come through the one-loss side.
Susan Mello's road to the finals was defeating J'Lene Barnes 7-2, Norma Deitz 7-6, Debra Aarens-Cerchri 7-6 and Kim Shaw 7-4 before she was defeated by Mary Olson 5-7. Then Susan defeated Gail Lave 7-6, Katie Moses 7-5 and Mary Olson 9-2 before playing Ying-Ya in the finals. This match would be one race to 11 with Ying-Ya winning 11-2, collecting $750 and the WPBA Qualifier and Susan Mello placing second and collecting $575.
The always exciting second chance tournament, this time with 19 ladies, was being held at the same time on Sunday with Debra Aarens-Cerchi from Vegas coming in 1st, Leslie Rogers from Texas coming in 2nd and Helene Caukin from Florida coming in 3rd.
Thanks to Julie Stephenson, Lucille Donahue and Melinda Bailey who helped run this stop and thanks again to Wes Hunter for his continued support of this tour!
Come visit us at our next stop at G-Cue Billiards in Round Rock, TX (outside of Austin) October 13-14 and visit us on the web for all information: www.hunterclassics.com. for more pictures from this tournament, please click here.
