Tina Malm and Briana Miller
As best as we can figure, the last time (before this past weekend) that Briana Miller and Tina Malm met in a meaningful pool match was in the summer of 2017 at a stop on the J. Pechauer Northeast Women’s Tour (JPNEWT) in Frederick, MD. At the event, they both had to contend with Karen Corr, who, two years earlier, had dominated the JPNEWT season, winning eight of the tour’s 11 stops that year. In 2016, Corr competed in and won all three of the tour’s events in which she participated. In that summer of 2017, she was making what would prove to be her only appearance on the tour and came from the loss side to win it. Briana Miller met up with Corr in the third round of that event and defeated her in a double-hill bout. Miller advanced, eventually, to the hot seat match, which is where she ran into Malm. Miller sent Malm off (7-2) to what proved to be a semifinal match against Corr. Corr defeated Malm (also 7-2) and then defeated Miller 9-4 in the final to claim her one and only JPNEWT title that year.
Miller and Malm met in another hot seat match this past weekend (Sat., Aug. 17) at the Maryland State Ladies 9-Ball Championships, which drew 26 entrants to Bank Shot Bar and Grill in Laurel, MD. They met three times, in the hot seat match and double-elimination final. It was Miller who came from the loss side in this one and returned to defeat Malm twice to claim the MD State Ladies title.
Miller, the current tour director of the JPNEWT, opened her winning campaign against the former JPNEWT tour director, Linda Shea, who’d initiated an extremely cordial and peaceful transfer of power two years ago. Over the years, Miller and Shea had met on a number of occasions, most recently, in the finals of a stop during the ‘transitional’ 2022 season when Miller was learning the ropes of taking over as tour director. They battled in the final of that tour stop, with Miller claiming the title. Oddly enough they’d finished as winner (Miller) and runner-up (Shea) in that 2017 season during which Malm and Miller had squared off in the hot seat match of the event won by Corr. Five months later, Miller and Shea battled in the finals once more, with Miller again claiming the event title.
The luck of the bracket draw this past weekend set them up against each other in the opening round of play. They battled back and forth towards what looked to be a double-hill battle, but Miller got out ahead by two to win it 6-4. Shea lost her opening, loss-side match to another JPNEWT veteran, Nicole Nester 5-3.
Miller advanced to take on a series of other JPNEWT veterans, including wins over Eugenia Gyftopoulos 6-1 and Ashley Benoit 6-4, to draw junior competitor Skylar Hess in one of the winners’ side semifinals. Malm, in the meantime, who’d drawn an opening round bye, opened with a 6-3 victory over Nester, before downing Christy Norris 6-1 and drawing Kelly Wyatt in the other winners’ side semifinal.
Miller and Malm advanced to the hot seat match with identical 6-2 victories over Hess and Wyatt. Malm grabbed the ‘seat’ 6-4 and waited on Miller’s return.
On the loss side, Gyftopoulos and Nester were both working on four-match, loss-side winning streaks when Hess and Wyatt showed up to challenge them. Gyftopoulos had followed her opening-round loss to Miller with victories over Rachel Walters 5-3, Harley King (2), Theresa Tascarella (2) and survived a double-hill battle against Christy Norris to meet up with Hess. Nester had followed her loss to Malm with victories over Shea (3), Judie Wilson (3), Carol Clark (double hill) and defeated Ashley Benoit (3) to meet up with Wyatt.
Between them, Hess and Wyatt gave up just a single rack in the combined 11 games they played for advancement to the quarterfinals. It was Hess who gave up the single rack to Gyftopoulos, while Wyatt was engaged in shutting out Nester. Hess then confined Wyatt’s loss-side trip to a single match, defeating her in those quarterfinals 5-2.
It’s all well and good to talk about ‘playing your game, not your opponent,’ but there’s little doubt that Hess faced Miller in the semifinals with some sense of how formidable an opponent Miller represented. It turned out to be a well-founded sense of wary anticipation because Miller shut Hess out to earn her second and necessarily, third shot at Malm, waiting for her in the hot seat.
Malm may have approached the final with a similar sense of wary anticipation, albeit one that had her victory in the hot seat match to build upon. Miller took the opening set of the final 6-3 and backed it up with a 6-2 second set to claim the MD State Ladies 9-Ball Championship title.
Tour director Loye Bolyard and On the Hill Productions thanked the ownership and staff at Bank Shot Bar & Grill for their hospitality, along with Moori, Iwan Simonis Cloth, Aramith Billiard Balls and AZBilliards. The next On the Hill Productions event, scheduled for the weekend of Sept. 14-15, will be a ‘1000 and under’ Partners tournament. Limited to 64 teams, the event will be hosted by Brews & Cues on the Boulevard in Glen Burnie, MD.
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