I got a call last Thursday from a young man named Taylor, he's 21 years old. He was a Perfect Aim student of mine about 3 months ago. There were also 3 other boys there from the Elite family. I did kind of an all afternoon lesson with them all.
Taylor wanted me to play in a 3 man rated tournament with him and Jake Elite.
I saw Taylor play at CR's and he was playing pretty sporty and was using a lot of the new techniques that he learned from Perfect Aim. I was pretty impressed.
During the phone call he told me that Jakes game had just went off the charts since the lesson. You see Jake is one of those players that I talk about that shoots with only one eye. Once he saw what was going on the sky is the limit and at his young age of 16 he could get better real fast.
So anyway, I told Taylor sure I'd play.
After I got off the phone I was bending over to put on my pants and my lower back kind of went squished
. The pain was terrible. I ran and put ice on it but it's usually about a 3 day healing process when this happens. I broke my lower back in 1999 and had surgery to fix things as good as they could. But this happens every once in a while.
I really wanted to see what these kids had so rather than call and tell them I couldn't I got out the old back brace and headed to Farmington Billiards for the MPA 3 man tourney run by John Stitch.
Our first match the boys kind of had the jitters and we were down 5-1 in a race to 8. I kidded around with them a little trying to loosen them up and their games turned right around. I think I made them more nervous than the other team. We won the match 8-5.
As we played the second match I noticed something. Taylor was playing like he was when I saw him a month ago, pretty sporty to say the least, but Jake was playing ridiculous good and he's only 16. He was running out and playing shape for shots that would make most players shudder. This was really fun for me to see first hand.
This kept up for a long time and soon there were only 4 teams left on the winners side and we were one of them.
This tournament started at 12;00 Sat and now it was 3;00AM Sunday morning. A pretty grueling format to say the least.
I was so proud of these boys the way they played. Every once in a while Taylor would come back and say to me, That was perfect aim there. My reply was; I just gave you the tools. it's all you. You are the one getting it done and he was and so was Jake.
Up until now we never got to the hill hill game. Taylor always seemed to come through and win his game to give us the win 6-8 never letting them get to hill hill.
Finally we played a real good team. The score got to hill hill and I was the anchor and broke dry. The opponent ran out, shot real good so out of the winners side we went.
Our next match went hill hill also with Taylor and Jake making some real key shots to get us there. These kids played great.
At hill hill the rule was that you could pick a player on the team to shoot that final game. taylor just looked at me and said your playing. I said OK. I ran out after the opponent broke and shot 4 balls and couldn't get it done.
Now we were playing for 3rd and 4th. It's about 5:00AM in the morning and we are all pretty tired. We were playing on 2 tables to try and speed things up. Turns out that with both games started we had no chance to pick our player to play the hill hill game. Both games were already going.
I ran out a real tough rack only to see Taylor watching his opponent ran out the final rack to stop us with 4th place.
These kids played their hearts out. I can't even come close to expressing how well they played. It almost seemed like a dream. They just kept getting it done.
I wish we didn't have to start playing on 2 tables because I was having so much fun watching these young guns run out.
I recall having opponents ask me where this young kid was from. That was Jake. Most of the players hadn't seen him before.
I would always tell them back, Jake and Taylor along with Jakes brothers and April Larsen won the MPA team tournament, $10,000 added in Blaine the month before.
But when the finals came around most of the players had gone so they didn't really see these kids play.
You see jakes mom and Dad had me travel south of Rochester to give these boys the Perfect Aim lesson. These 2 tournaments were handicapped. With these kids playing so much better their handicaps were a little out of wack to say the least.
I was sick during the Blaine tourney that they won but I was right there to see what was going on in Farmington.
I spent all day Sunday in bed. Got up and watched the Packers play and went back to bed until noon the next day.
tried to play Monday but the back is still pretty bad but I would do it again in a heart beat. What I saw these kids doing was unbelievable.
These kids are the future of pool here in the Twin Cities and from what I can see their Junior coaches have done a spectacular job.
I'm just happy to leave a little piece of my knowledge with as many of them that I can.
In 2 or 3 years from now everyone in the country will know who Jake is and taylor is already making a name for himself.
And what fun it is to see these kids grow up and get it done right before my eyes.
These kids don't know how proud I was to be able to play with them and see this first hand. 4th place out of 43 teams...........
Great kids also. Just what we need in this pool world of ours.
It don't get any better than this.
:grin::thumbup:
