UM Junior beats competition in Seattle tournament

Bring on Jeannette “The Black Widow” Lee. Hell, bring on Minnesota Fats, for all I care.

I’m pumped. I’m stoked. Yesterday I dominated the best female billiards player on the University of Montana campus in a game of 8-ball.

OK, “dominated” may be a bit strong. So may “edged,” even. But thanks to some generous ball-spotting by my opponent and the pool version of a mulligan – a pooligan, perhaps – I was victorious. 

Ahva Potticary shouldn’t be losing to me at pool. She rarely loses to anyone. Last month in Seattle, at the regional qualifying tournament for the Association of College Unions International 9-Ball Championships, she swept the field.

Granted, the field there comprised just four women, but her “boyfriend and semi-trainer” is quick to point out that when included in one of the men’s brackets, she finished second.

In fact, David Reynolds fawns, if Potticary hadn’t “choked” on the 9-ball, she would have been first.

“Any other day she’ll look at me, balance a spoon on her nose and make that shot,” said Reynolds, whom Potticary was playing against when I arrived at the UC Game Room.

With her win in Seattle, Potticary, a junior biology major from Portland, Ore., punched her ticket to Tucson, Ariz., for the ACUI nationals in July. She says she’ll be one of only about 20 players, but insists she won’t win and is just going for the experience. Yet, she acknowledges the pressure of playing in front of scouts from professional tours.

Watching Potticary work the cue, it’s not hard to see why she’s been successful. Her face hardens with concentration as she lines up her shot. Reynolds calls it her “Jaws face” because she looks like she’s “preparing to eat somebody’s boat.”

When she hits the ball, her stroke is strong and hard, but not wild.

Potticary said she picked up pool just two years ago, inspired in part by cinema.

“I didn’t have a favorite (pool movie), I’ve just seen a lot of cool pool players in movies,” she said right before sinking the three ball on a bank shot.

But it takes practice. Reynolds, a player for seven years, coos that he has never seen anyone pick up the game as quickly as she has.

“I’m here a lot,” Potticary demurs, as the nine rattles in and then out of the corner pocket, eliciting an annoyed pout.

She begs me not to make her sound cocky, because there are “a lot of people who are better at pool” at UM.

Regardless, her confidence and skill are undeniably intimidating.

When she finishes wiping the floor with Reynolds, Potticary looks up at me and asks, “Wanna play a game?” Like the idiot writer I am, I say yes.

Pool has always intimidated me. While Potticary was drawn to the game because it bred cool people, that very thing scared me away. I’ve never been the cool, smoky bars, scotch-rocks and eight-ball-corner-pocket-with-my-eyes-closed kind of guy. Moreover, pool confuses me. It’s one of those classic questions, probably first posed by the ancient Greeks, “How do you hit a round ball square?”

Because of my assumptions, I had never really played a game of pool before yesterday.

“You don’t have to know how to play the game to enjoy it,” she said cheerily before we begin.

My first shot was one for the funny pages, not the sports section. I stroke the cue ball into the three, which veers off course into the 11, before innocently coming to rest three feet from where I intend it to go.

Potticary feels it early, dropping her first three shots. When I blunder on my next attempt, she rearranges the balls, giving me a direct line at the side pocket.

Eureka!

After I make that one, I start to feel it (see lucky). Potticary’s shots come millimeters short of the pockets, while mine dance all around the table – rarely in the direction I intend – before finding, as if guided by remote control, a pocket.

My first chance to win comes with both of us needing the 8-ball, and me banking on a bank shot. It sends my ball into the cushion and perilously close to toppling into the wrong hole.

Reynolds quickly grabs the teetering black sphere and says, “We’ll make her work for it.”

He places it in the middle of the table, leading to a missed shot by Potticary. This sets me up with a cake corner shot. I notice Reynolds didn’t insist that I have to work for it.

After I “win,” Potticary laughs, and murmurs something about “playing like crap.”

Her boyfriend, however, seems elated. That I had done on my first try something that he says he can’t do with much regularity earns me a high five and a swell compliment:

“This guy’s going to win nationals next year!”

I’m up to the challenge. I’ll just need a pooligan or two. In the meantime, I’ll be pulling for Ahva Potticary.