Kansas City, Chicago, Indianapolis, and Louisville all all 4 hour drives from St. Louis. It's not Timbuktu.
If you're a young, promising player in the 700 range who is polite and pleasant to be around I seriously doubt you'd have a problem finding a decent game any weekend of the year. Would you have to travel and make sacrifices? Of course you would, but how is that different from any other national-level junior sport?
The bigger issue is getting American young people to dedicate themselves to pool when there are so many other, better ways to make a living and the dollar amounts available in pro pool are so small. Youth unemployment (age 15-24) in America is 9% in the latest CIA Factbook data. Europe is a shitshow by comparison: Spain 36%, Greece 36%, Italy 31%, Serbia 30%, Albania 28%, Sweden 24%, Portugal 23%, France 20%, Belgium 20%. Only Germany is below us at 7%.