krbsailing said:
Good Morning,
I'll try to get ahold of Mark.
Do you remember how the league operated and what it cost to join the Western BCA PPA....seems weird that you would have to join two organizations.
Forgot to tell you that Mark Avlon is in Lynnwood -- not very far away. Mark will be able to answer all of your questions far better than I can -- I only played and was very marginally interested in how it ran.
I DO kind of remember that we got some kind of break on the national BCA membership fee because we were playing in a sanctioned league. And, I believe, at the time, the WBPPA Mem. Fee was $10. So, we paid either $20 or $25 TOTAL for both memberships. Seems to me that the normal national BCA Mem. Fee, by itself, was $25/year, at that time -- so to me, this is a wash!
Also, BCA's (and therefore also WBPPA'S) fiscal year is odd -- it runs from June 1 - May 31. So, don't start your league until after June 1. It is too late to qualify anyone for any more BCA tournaments before June 1.
TO BE SURE, CLEAR THIS WITH MARK!
You can go to any BCA tournament and pay the $25 at the door to join the BCA (this card is then good, as above, from Jun 1 - May 31) PLUS whatever the entry fee might be. However, you may only play in the Open or Masters' Singles -- you may not participate in any of the other events (teams, trick shooting, scotch doubles, etc.). You must be a BCA-qualified team member to play any of the other events.
In order to be a BCA-qualified team member, you must have played in a BCA-sanctioned league and have played a minimum of 40 games in 10 weeks (at least, that's how OUR league HAD to run). The league, itself, had to have at least 6 teams and 30 members (we had 10 teams, 50 members and a few non-qualifying replacements). All of the members of your team at the BCA (and WBPPA, as well) tournament MUST be members of your home league.
We usually tried to get started in the 1st week of August because there is a cut-off time near the end of September for submission of league stats to WBPPA and BCA to qualify for tournament play. We always seemed to get this done just in the nick of time, and our league continued on for 3-4 weeks after that.
We played as an in-house league out of Riverside Billiards (now Westside Billiards) in Mt. Vernon. There is some other requirement for league size, so we were not large enough to be a stand-alone league. So, Mark worked it out so that we could be the "Northern Division" of his Sno-King BCA Pool League, the two diisions together having more than enough teams to be a sanctioned league.
No one here is trying to put together another "qualifier league," so chances are that Mark might be willing to work the same deal for you if you can't get enough teams together.
Finally, as you have noticed, the BCA, itself, does not have a single tournament in the PacNW!!! In fact, I'm not real sure WHAT the BCA does right now, other than the December and May Vegas tournaments. Any "regional" BCA tournaments appear to be put on by the regional associations, such as the WBPPA.
In order to play in ANY of these regional tournaments, you MUST have been a playing member on a team sanctioned by that particular association that is sponsoring/running the regional tournament. This means that you are functionally restricted to playing in only that particular regional tournament that is sponsored/run by your "home" regional association, by whom you were sanctioned/qualified. You may not even buy your way in at the door to play in the singles events -- you MUST be sanctioned/qualified to play at all!
So, WBPPA is actually a good deal for us here in the PacNW. They run two really big regional tournaments each year at the Chinook Winds Casino in Lincoln City, OR. Lincoln City's on the coast about 20-25 miles north of Newport and about 55-60 miles west of Salem and the casino is right at seaside -- a GREAT set-up.
One tournament is an 8-Ball tournament and the other is a 9-Ball tournament. One is in November and the other is in March (can't remember which is which -- been several years). Both dates are outside of tourist season, so Lincoln City is a very scenic, quaint and laid-back little town at these times and this makes the whole trip a REALLY NICE get-away!
Finally, WBPPA helps somewhat defray the cost of the entry fees for as many as TWO teams, or even more, depending upon league size and structure. This is the slate of events in the Lincoln City tnmt's, to the best of my recollection:
9-BALL:
1. Open Singles (Mens Division and Women's Div)
2. Masters Singles (Mens Div/Women's Div)
3. Seniors' Singles (Mens Div/Womens/Div)
4. Open Mixed Scotch Doubles (one man, one woman on each team)
5. Masters' Mixed Scotch Doubles (same as "Open")
6. 3-Man teams (Mens Div/Women's Div)
8-BALL:
Same as above for the 9-Ball tnmt, except:
"A Division" (Men's Div/Women's Div)
replaces the "Open Division," with a further "B Dvision" and "C Division" beneath the "A's" and Masters; and,
5-Man Teams (Men's Div/Women's Div) instead of 3-Man Teams.
Additionally, it is possible that these events were either spread out more, or added to, as the last time I played several years ago, a questionnaire was circulated to get everybody's input as to what could be done to make the WBPPA events more attractive.
As I said, Mark will be the best person to
PROPERLY fill you in on all of this. You will find him to be very easy to talk to.
krbsailing said:
Can you tell me why you think the interest for BCA in Mt. Vernon/Burlington dropped off to zero 
All of us up here have spent our entire lives playing on 8', 9' and 10' tables. It is really VERY HARD to find a 7' table anywhere north of the Columbia River or in Idaho, who also participate in the WBPPA. When I went, the WBPPA tnmts are played on Valley 7' tables with Championship Mercury Ultra cloth. The pockets were also pretty forgiving.
To all of us, it's almost like playing inside of a bathtub, if you know what I mean. I'm not all that accurate, but on these tables, it was almost IMPOSSIBLE for me to miss a shot! So, apply this to the guys up here who are better players than me ...
.
A bunch of us went down the 1st year. When we got there, nobody knew us from anywhere -- we were just a bunch of hicks from the unexplored and uncharted backwaters of the boondocks of WA State.
4 of us were promoted to BCA Masters on the first trip and 3 more were promoted to BCA Masters on the next trip! I expected that, sometime in the next 2 WBPPA tournaments, I would also get my Master Rating. I monied in both the Open 9-Ball and the Open 8-Ball -- there were nearly 300 participants in each of these events.
Out of the bunch of us, we formed TWO 3-Man teams (our first trip was for the 9-Ball tnmt). One of our teams
WON THE WHOLE TOURNAMENT against some very highly touted and recognized teams with Masters AND Grand Masters on them. The other team took
SECOND PLACE!!! The ENTIRE organization and all of the players could NOT believe what they were seeing! Then, in the next (8-Ball) tournament, my 5-Man Team tied for 9th and our other 5-Man Team tied for 13th (they were all waitin' for us, this time
)!
Once you're promoted to the Masters, you can no longer play any event BELOW any of the Masters' Divisions, either WBPPA or BCA. We all figured that, at this rate and knowing each others abailities, within 3 years,
all of us would be BCA-rated Masters.
Additionally, when you re-form your home league the next year, no home league team can have more than
one Master/Grand Master as a team member. This also messes up how you can put together your WBPPA event teams -- you can also have only
one Master/Grand Master on your event/tournament teams. Similar restrictions exist in the two big BCA tournaments, although I believe they have a Masters' Teams Division, as well, where a team can be entirely Masters/Grand Masters.
To us, playing on those tiny tables with buckets for pockets was like taking candy from babies, as most of the WBPPA event participants are from Oregon. The first time I went messing around down there was in 1987. Everywhere I went (I'm talking about 1987), there was NOTHING but 7' tables! As I said, I'm not really that great of a shot, but I POUNDED the LIVING C**P out of EVERYBODY I played against with the greatest of ease.
The 7' tables are the ONLY thing most of the WBPPA players have ever seen and, never having been truly challenged by bigger and tougher tables, they are a lot sloppier than we are up here. This makes the events and advancement to BCA Master Rating too easy for us and wreaks havoc with how we could form league teams.
This would be okay in areas with a large population base that could support a ton of teams easily. But we DO live in "Hicksville," WA, pop. 37, give or take a few thousand -- it was hard enough for us to put together just 10 5-Man teams for our home league!
With all of the Masters' restrictions, it was becoming next to impossible and, with any more promotions, WOULD be impossible to put together enough teams for our home league. Knowing that this would also affect our flexibility for future BCA and WBPPA events, we felt it was like beating our heads against the wall and just simply lost interest.
krbsailing said:
What good does it do to join BCA if they don't have any regional tourneys?!?
Other than the fact that it is possible that you might get a partially or even a fully funded entry fee back from league play and a REALLY FUN TRIP to Vegas, I think I handled the rest of this somewhere above
.
As I said, I just played and was not all too interested in how our league was run. I was only interested in getting enough games in to qualify. In addition to the one-time membership fees, I believe there were also weekly game fees that were split and went to the WBPPA and BCA -- I can't remember how much it was, but $5/week per person comes to mind for some reason.
We didn't pay for table time, as Dave Goodenbour (owner of the establishment) donated this time on 10 tables to the league during league play. Also, we played round-robin 9-Ball -- each player on each team played one game against each player on the other team, for a total of 25 games for one match, played on 2 tables.
So, start talking to Mark and get all of the info from him as soon as you can. He will be able to send you a complete set of all of the rules and regulations to help you get your league set-up and running successfully. Don't forget to ask him about software you can use to report stats and results to him, as he will most likely be your central contact person.
Again, best of luck
