Jia Li, who entered the WPBA's Regional Tour Championship on the weekend of January 8-11, having won three stops on the 2014 J. Pechauer Northeast Women's Tour, went undefeated through the event's field of 64 to claim the WPBA's 2015 Regional Tour Championship title. Her opponent in the finals of the RTC, Betty Lea from Atlanta, GA was a single event winner and Leader of the Year from the 2014 Sport 9 Ladies Tour. Together, they had survived two round robin stages of the RTC; Li, going undefeated through 10 matches in two stages, while Lea won seven of her 10 matches. The two advanced into a 16-player single elimination phase, which culminated when they faced each other, early Sunday evening. Li added four victories to her undefeated list to take the final match over Lea.
In all, 64 players, representing 14 regional women's tours gathered at Breakers Sky Bar Lounge in Herndon, VA to compete for the 2015 Regional Tour Champion title. It was the first combined RTC since 2008. Half of the entrants shared over $11,000 in prize money, including Li's first place prize of $2,500 and Lea's $1,400 as runner up.
In Stage One of the event, which divided the 64 entrants into eight groups and began on Thursday, January 8, Jia Li, Bernie Store, and Gail Eaton were the only competitors to emerge from the seven-match phase, undefeated. April Larson, Dawn Fox, Belinda Calhoun, Rebecca Wagner, Linda Shea, Nicole Albergaria, and Natalie Mans had each given up one match in the phase. They, along with 22 others, entered a Stage Two, three-match round robin phase, which featured eight groups of four players. The top two from each of the eight groups in Stage Two advanced to the 16-player, single elimination and final phase of the tournament.
Stage Two featured five undefeated performances (Li, Lea, Shea, Wagner and Meredith Lynch), while Samantha Barrett, Belinda Calhoun, Michele West, Suzanne Smith, Gail Eaton, Kawania Watson, Tara Williams, Kim Benson, Nicole Albergaria, and Jennifer Kraber won two out of three of their matches in the phase. Kelly Jones, who won just a single match of her three in the phase was also advanced to the final 16.
Emerging from the opening round of the single elimination phase (and combined with their second round opponent) were Watson and Lea, Smith and Albergaria, Benson and Li, and Shea and Williams. Lea advanced to the semifinals with a 7-3 win over Watson. Albergaria downed Smith 7-2. Li was tested, but survived a double hill battle against Benson, while Shea advanced with a 7-5 win over Williams.
Lea defeated Albergaria 7-5, as two of the JPNEWT representatives - Li and Shea - squared off in the other semifinal. The two had met three times in the finals on the JPNEWT tour, with Li winning all three. She defeated Shea in this match, as well; 7-4, to advance to the finals against Lea.
Li got out in front in the single race-to-9 final and stayed there. She completed her undefeated run with a 9-4 win over Lea and claimed the 2015 Regional Tour Championship title.
