The winds were blowing in the windy city of Chicago over the weekend of October 30th to November 3rd. Along with these winds came TAP players from all over the United States and Canada to decide our new national champions. The opening ceremony was conducted by TAP founder/CEO, Loyd Schonter as both national anthems of the United States and Canada were played while a three screen slide show was shown to carry out this heart felt moment. Loyd gave a brief opening announcement and welcome to all of the players while friends and families at home could be a part of the moment via a live stream broadcast courtesy of POVPOOL and Daniel Busch. Random matches were live streamed the entire time by POVPOOL along with excellent commentating by Daniel and a variety of guests he brought into his booth.
The annual TAP welcome party was held in a distinctive area of the Pheasant Run resort known as 'Bourbon Street". Players feasted on roast beef, turkey, crab claws and assorted meat, cheese and veggie platters as well as several beers on tap to celebrate their accomplishment and maybe to calm a few nerves before the competition kicked off the next morning.
The morning of the national team event started with a players meeting in two of the five the sky boxes overlooking the tournament arena. During the event the sky boxes served as a great viewing area to relax as well as for teams to get away from the action and talk over their strategies for upcoming rounds.
After the winds of Chicago blew thru, the national champion team was none other then a local team from the Chicagoland TAP league. FA Cues won the main event by besting a tough team from Georgia, the Honey Badgers.
For a complete listing of national 8,and 9 ball and Dream runner up teams as well as singles champions along with pictures go to the TAP blog at http://www.tapleague.blogspot.com/
During the live stream broadcasting, TAP and RunOut Apps. introduced the new TAP score keeping application for IPhone and IPad devices. Random matches were scored with the application superimposed on the live stream broadcast so viewers at home could see this new technology TAP has brought to their members. A application for android devices will be coming shortly. To get this application go to the Apple store and search under "Scorekeeper 2.0."
All in all, the Pheasant Run Resort and the Chicago area proved to be a big hit with the TAP players attending. TAP would like to thank all of the players that attended, our vendors and sponsors, the tournament staff and our loyal licensees for making this the best national event to date. Next up for TAP is our annual Rally at the Super Billiard Expo where this event has been expanded to a 192 team limit for 2014. After that, it's on to Dallas, Texas for our 2014 nationals next November.
