For the first time, the national championship trophy for the American Poolplayers Association’s Open 8-Ball Division was brought home to Arkansas, and members of the winning team have already started practicing for next year.
The winning team, You Got Action, from Jacksonville, has mounted its championship trophy at The Hangar,
the bar where the team practices. The trophy sits against the backdrop of a $25,000 presentation check symbolizing the team’s winnings, as well as various plaques and awards from pool teams that play out of The Hangar.
Looking at the newly mounted trophy and check, members of the team said the money is great, but no amount of cash could come close to the pride and joy they feel after winning the national championship.
“My true goal for this team was that we would play our best every time we played,” team captain Ronnie Nelson said.
“We wanted to see how far we go and how good we could do. Never in my wildest dreams did I think we would win it.”
You Got Action competed against more than 700 teams from the United States, Canada and Japan in a seven-day tournament in Las Vegas last month. The tournament is in its 34th year, and this was the first time a team from Arkansas has been named champion.
“Arkansas always goes out and puts on a good showing,” Nelson said. “The best I’ve heard of Arkansas doing was third place, and that was in the mid-’90s. I know of a team or two that’s placed fifth. In general, Arkansas is competitive enough to usually have one team in the top 32 pretty regularly. That’s a big deal in itself.”
The American Poolplayers Association sanctions the world’s largest amateur pool league and has established official rules, championships, formats and handicap systems for the sport of amateur billiards. The organization produces three major tournaments each year — the APA National Team Championships, the APA National Singles Championships and the U.S. Amateur Championship — and pays out more than $1.5 million in cash and prizes annually.
Nelson said members of You Got Action started playing together three years ago, but some of them have been playing for 15 years.
“I’ve been playing since 1997,” he said. “Half of my team has been to Vegas [to the tournament] before, but none of us has done anything like this, obviously.”
The tournament is not for professional pool players. Nelson said he sometimes compares amateur competitive pool to college football in that it’s not professional, but it is still important to the players and fans.
“Just like how important the college national championship is, that’s how important this is to pool players,” he said.
The week-long tournament is a mentally exhausting experience, Nelson said. Matches last three to four hours. The first matches of the day start at 9 a.m., and the last matches start as late as 11 p.m., usually ending around 3 the next morning.
“We average probably a solid eight hours of pool a day with crazy sleep schedules,” he said. “You’re just coming and going nonstop. It’s pretty intense.”
Of the eight players on the team, five play in each match. Each player can win as many as three points for the team, and the team totals determine the match winner.
“The thing that amazed me the most was that I took seven players down there, and every single one of them had a key moment of contributing to advancing the team,” Nelson said. “Obviously, it takes more than one person to win or lose, but there were key moments where players stepped it up. It was awesome going back and forth.”
You Got Action played 12 matches to go all the way to the championship match. The tournament was operated on a modified double-elimination system where each team is guaranteed two plays, but after the first three rounds, everyone has their two plays in, and the tournament turns to single elimination.
The Jacksonville team did lose once in the third round against a team from California, Nelson said, but they refocused and continued without a second loss.
“We just started focusing on one match at a time in order to get to the next round,” he said. “At that point, every round was more money, so we just kept going as best we could.”
To get to the national tournament, local pool teams compete weekly in bar league matches. There are three 16-week sessions to qualify for the city league’s top spot, and from there, teams are chosen to go to Las Vegas.
Since 2010, eight teams that play out of The Hangar have qualified to go to the national championship.
At the end of the tournament this year, $25,000 was divided among the seven players on the winning team, with each You Got Action team member taking home a little more than $3,500.
“The money is awesome, but it’s nothing compared to winning,” Nelson said.
One member of You Got Action has moved out of state, and another is stepping down from the team, but the other members of the team are already getting ready for the next round of matches.
Staff writer Angela Spencer can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or aspencer@arkansasonline.com.