Nathan Childress, Landon Hollingsworth and Hunter Zayas
Two 13U divisions play last 2023 JIC event and post-season championship tournaments
In a lot of significant ways, the pool-playing, Junior International Championships (JIC) family of competitors is like an All-Star baseball team made up of the top players in a league. The team has its batting-average stars and its second-tier players who tend to hit below-average but can often come up with a critical hit at an opportune time. It has its share of home-run hitters as well, who strike out a lot but have a way of hitting one out of the park at a dramatic moment. The team also features an ever-shifting group of first and second-tier competitors, who are part of the team but don’t get to play in every game. And, of course, as all teams must, they’re run by a fine manager in the person of one Ra Hanna.
It’s a unique team because it plays against itself. It’s also a team that by design, will lose some of its best players every year. Junior pool players have very short careers, though as they move on, their careers as adults can, and in some cases already have, flourished outside of their junior milieu. Into its third, and soon to be its fourth year as a team, the JIC family is about to lose some of its best players, as a very strict, qualification clock moves them toward their 19th birthday (as long as a competitor enters a JIC season when they’re 18, a 19th birthday in the middle of a season will not disqualify them from competition in that season). There is, within the JIC structure, a rather oxymoronic ‘senior’ division for the JIC’s junior competitors; the ProAm division, which allows mixed-gender competitors whose ‘clock’ has ticked past that 19th birthday to compete in that one division of JIC events. There’s even a clock in that division, but it’s ticking toward the age of 21.
And now, before this report ages out of its ‘relevance’ division, let’s move on to the 8th and final stop on the JIC’s 2023 season. It happened this past weekend (Sept. 16-17) at Wolf’s Den in Roanoke, VA (where it started back in January) and for the two 13U divisions and the single, mixed-gender ProAm division, it was the end of the road. The 13U boys and girls competed in both their final regular season tournament and their divisions’ invitational championship event. The ProAm division completed its regular season and awarded its top two competitors (based on total points earned at events throughout the season) free entry to Pat Fleming’s International Open (Oct. 30-Nov. 4) in Norfolk, VA.
We’ll start with that. The ProAm division winners for the 2023 JIC season are. . .
Landon Hollingsworth (1st place), who won three of the JIC regular-season ProAm events this year, including this last one, where he went undefeated through a field of 24 entrants to claim the title. And Brent Worth (2nd place), who won the series’ second stop down in Florida, finished as runner-up to Hollingsworth two stops later in Ohio and by competing in all eight stops in the series, kept adding significant points every time he played.
Had they met in the finals of the last ProAm event and Worth had defeated Hollingsworth, they would have ended the season in a tie for the top spot. They almost met in the final ProAm event, when each faced an opponent in one of the winners’ side semifinals; Hollingsworth facing Nathan Childress and Worth taking on Hunter Zayas. Hollingsworth advanced to the hot seat match 7-3 over Childress. Worth did not, sent to the loss side 7-4 by Zayas. Hollingsworth claimed the hot seat 7-4 over Zayas.
On the loss side, Childress drew Hayden Ernst (who also competed and won the 13U Boys event), while Worth faced Eddie Vondereau (who also competed in the 18U Boys event). Vondereau ended Worth’s ProAm point-gathering activity for the division by defeating him 7-4. Worth’s 5th place finish assured him the runner-up spot in the season’s standings.
Childress downed Ernst 7-1 to meet and defeat Vondereau 7-3 in the quarterfinals, before eliminating Zayas 7-4 in the semifinals. Hollingsworth and Childress battled to double hill in the final, but Hollingsworth won it, claiming the last ProAm title of the 2023 season and the top spot in the 2023 ProAm tour standings.
Skylar Hess, Noelle Tate and Jordan Helfrey
Tate wins 13U girls event and championship, Ernst wins 13U boys, “Jawz” wins championship
Noelle Tate, younger sister to Bethany and Joey Tate, came into the JIC’s final 13U Girls event in 4th place in the division’s standings. When it was over, she’d leaped over Skylynn Elliott and Skylar Hess to finish the 13U girls’ season in 2nd place, just behind Jordan Helfery. The event drew seven entrants and she’d defeated two of them (Elliott did not compete). Tate beat Jordan Helfery in a winners’ side semifinal 7-1 and Skylar Hess, twice, grabbing the hot seat 7-5 and, once Hess had downed Helfery 7-5 in the semifinals, defeated her a second time in the finals 9-5.
But she wasn’t done. The same threesome crossed paths in the 13U Girls Championship event, which drew 6 entrants. Along with Tate, Helfery and Hess, Kelli Banks, Franki Spain and Aalinah Fulgern joined in the Championship festivities.
Tate and Hess met twice in the 13U Championship as well. They met in a winners’ side semifinal, while Helfery and Franki Spain (whose brother would win the 13U Boys event) met in the other one. Helfery and Spain locked up in a double hill fight that eventually sent Spain to the hot seat match. Tate downed Hess for the third time 7-4 to join her. Tate claimed the hot seat 7-4 over Spain.
On the loss side, Hess and Helfery locked up in a double-hill quarterfinal, won by Hess, who defeated Franki Spain 7-1 in the semifinals. Tate and Hess, fighting for the fourth and final time on the weekend, made the occasion memorable, battling back and forth to double hill in the finals, until Tate claimed her fourth win over Hess and claimed her second title.
Tanner McKinney, D’Angelo Spain and Jas Makhani
Going into the final weekend for the 13U Boys, Jas Makhani sat atop the division’s leaderboard with two wins and two runner-up finishes in five appearances over the eight-event season. Hayden Ernst was the only competitor within a country mile of him, in second place, with three wins in four appearances. D’Angelo “Jaws” Spain was a distant eighth on the strength of two appearances at which he’d finished as runner-up to Ernst back in January and fourth behind him in April.
It was Ernst who won the 10-entrant, 13U Boys final event, with Tanner McKinney (#14 in the standings at the start) as runner-up and “Jaws” in third place. The standings leader, Jas Makhani, finished fourth. Ernst went undefeated to the hot seat match, having given up only two racks in the two matches it took him to get there. Tanner McKinney gave up five in two matches to get to the same place, including one only to “Jawz” in one of the winners’ side semifinals. In the hot seat match, McKinney, who’d finished 5th on both of his previous appearances in the series (Jan. & April) faced Ernst, who’d won more events than McKinney had even entered. McKinney won the battle, convincingly, 7-2.
On the loss side, Makhani and “Jawz” met up in the quarterfinals, with “Jawz” prevailing 7-3 to take on Ernst in the semifinals. That match, eminently predictable between the top two players in the division standings, went double hill before Ernst dropped the final 9-ball and got a second shot at McKinney, waiting for him in the hot seat. Ernst edged out in front near the end to claim the final, regular season’s 13U boys title.
Ernst, McKinney, “Jawz” and Makhani figured prominently in the seven-entrant, 13U Championship, as well, though not in the same order. McKinney, no doubt motivated by his failure to claim his first JIC 13U title from Ernst in the last event of the season, met and defeated him, double hill, in one of the opening rounds of the Championship.
Makhani, no doubt motivated by his quarterfinal loss to “Jawz” in the division’s final event, met and defeated him 7-5 in a winners’ side semifinal of the Championship. In a kind of poetic way, Makhani and McKinney met in the hot seat match, where once again, McKinney got himself one match away from a title, downing Makhani 7-5.
On the loss side, “Jawz” showed up and immediately took Ernst out of the equation, defeating him 7-4, and then, in the quarterfinals, eliminated Johnny Hammontree 7-1 (Hammontree had ended up 4th in the pre-event standings). In another poetic kind of way, Jas and “Jaws” (Makhani and Spain) met up (again) in the semifinals, with “Jawz” prevailing 7-2 to take on McKinney in the finals.
If there was ever a way to predict the onset of a double-hill match, the final between “Jawz” and McKinney would have met all the criteria. Two opponents, who’d finished 5th (“Jawz”) and 7th (McKinney) in their division during the regular season, were battling for that division’s Championship title. Both strongly motivated to win, having not won in any of the regular season events in which they’d competed. Both with battles against opponents higher in the standings behind them. Definitely a recipe for a double-hill battle at any level of competition.
And it happened. For the second time, McKinney was forced to settle for his highest finish of the 2023 JIC season, as “Jaws” celebrated his first event victory of that season.
(Note: A report on the final event of the 18U Boys and Girls divisions, which in the end, determined which of 16 boys and 8 girls would be advancing to compete in a divisional Championship to be held in conjunction with the International Open in Norfolk, VA will follow, soon).
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