If you attend or are affiliated with a college or university this is a call to arms. Start a pool team. Get involved if one exists. Drag other students along.
If you are an instructor offer some free group lessons and seminars at your local campuses.
If you are a professional do some free exhibitions on a local campus or 2.
Anything that can be done at the collegiate level needs to be attempted.
One of the biggest periods of growth for the sport followed ww2. Many soldiers who came home from war started attending colleges using the GI Bill. Most Universities had UCs sporting 9foot gold crowns and they were the apparatus through which many pool players were born.
As our soldiers come home from Iraq and Afghanistan we should see a similar occurrence as far as increased college attendance. My question is how many major college campuses still have University Centers with 9 foot equipment or any equipment at all?
I know in the 90's Tennessee Tech had a UC center full of gold crowns. I went home for Christmas break and came back to find some idiot administrator had let someone come in and replace them all with Valley Bar Boxes. None of the regular players who were learning the game set foot in the UC again after that tragic Christmas.
The demographics are about to change all across the nation's campuses and there will be a very small window to inject some life into our sport that will be be seen for decades to come.
What should be happening in the industry is that Brunswick or Diamond should be coming up with package deals to carry to colleges to get the equipment back into place before the troops start attending in mass....
If you are an instructor offer some free group lessons and seminars at your local campuses.
If you are a professional do some free exhibitions on a local campus or 2.
Anything that can be done at the collegiate level needs to be attempted.
One of the biggest periods of growth for the sport followed ww2. Many soldiers who came home from war started attending colleges using the GI Bill. Most Universities had UCs sporting 9foot gold crowns and they were the apparatus through which many pool players were born.
As our soldiers come home from Iraq and Afghanistan we should see a similar occurrence as far as increased college attendance. My question is how many major college campuses still have University Centers with 9 foot equipment or any equipment at all?
I know in the 90's Tennessee Tech had a UC center full of gold crowns. I went home for Christmas break and came back to find some idiot administrator had let someone come in and replace them all with Valley Bar Boxes. None of the regular players who were learning the game set foot in the UC again after that tragic Christmas.
The demographics are about to change all across the nation's campuses and there will be a very small window to inject some life into our sport that will be be seen for decades to come.
What should be happening in the industry is that Brunswick or Diamond should be coming up with package deals to carry to colleges to get the equipment back into place before the troops start attending in mass....
