The 2009 Spring BCA League Champions of Amsterdam Billiards NYC is...
Monkey Steals the Peach!
*Missing from the picture is one Mika Immonen who was in Sweden competing in a tournament. So, yeah, we won without him. He's happy cause now with the BCA League Championship he's has pretty much won everything.
We won! Wooohooo!
Now, granted, the Monkey and I didn't play in the playoffs. We both had terrible records this season and we decided that playoff time = winning time and the best chances for our team to win is if we played our best available players. This was our "contribution" to the team effort.
I know it sounds funny, contributing by sitting out, but I saw some thrown together teams, and not a team of friends like our team is, argue about who should play and who shouldn't play. I also saw some strange matchups and I think it's only because they needed to play that person cause that person hasn't played yet and would probably bitch about it if they didn't get a turn. This makes sense to me if this was the regular season but NOT in the playoffs. Not if the goal is winning.
Going into the playoffs I really liked our chances. Our team was skilled, sure, but so were a lot of the other teams and being a handicapped leagued everyone has a chance to win. Our advantage I felt was that our players were...
Gambler.
Tournament Player and Big Money Gambler.
Gambler.
WPBA Pro.
Yeah, having seen those guys play for a thousand a set fairly regularly and having seen our WPBA Pro play the World's best women tough I definitely thought we had the mental advantage. They were going to be able to handle the pressure better and find a way to win over some of the other teams who were new to the experience.
C'mon, league matches over 1K sets? This should be easy for them!
Having said that a comment made during the finals was "I'd rather be playing for 10k than do this again." It's definitely is a different kind of pressure when people, your teammates, are counting on you and feeling like you've let them down if you lost than just taking cash, even large amounts of cash, out of your own pocket.
In close matches you could see where being mentally prepared for the MOMENT, being use to the experience of PRESSURE and having had to perform under it, really made a difference.
Our guys had more experience and it showed.
Finals.
Hill-Hill. (Sort of. If our guy lost it'll go to a tie-breaker set.)
Plays a lock up safety.
Gets ball in hand and runs out but miscues on the 8-ball. (It goes in but no shape on the 9-ball.)
Makes a seriously hard cut on the 9-ball for the win.
We won!
I'll do another post on the mental game soon but for now I just wanna bask in the glory of winning the league. (Plus I'm in Vegas right now and exhausted.)
:-)
Monkey Steals the Peach!
*Missing from the picture is one Mika Immonen who was in Sweden competing in a tournament. So, yeah, we won without him. He's happy cause now with the BCA League Championship he's has pretty much won everything.
We won! Wooohooo!
Now, granted, the Monkey and I didn't play in the playoffs. We both had terrible records this season and we decided that playoff time = winning time and the best chances for our team to win is if we played our best available players. This was our "contribution" to the team effort.
I know it sounds funny, contributing by sitting out, but I saw some thrown together teams, and not a team of friends like our team is, argue about who should play and who shouldn't play. I also saw some strange matchups and I think it's only because they needed to play that person cause that person hasn't played yet and would probably bitch about it if they didn't get a turn. This makes sense to me if this was the regular season but NOT in the playoffs. Not if the goal is winning.
Going into the playoffs I really liked our chances. Our team was skilled, sure, but so were a lot of the other teams and being a handicapped leagued everyone has a chance to win. Our advantage I felt was that our players were...
Gambler.
Tournament Player and Big Money Gambler.
Gambler.
WPBA Pro.
Yeah, having seen those guys play for a thousand a set fairly regularly and having seen our WPBA Pro play the World's best women tough I definitely thought we had the mental advantage. They were going to be able to handle the pressure better and find a way to win over some of the other teams who were new to the experience.
C'mon, league matches over 1K sets? This should be easy for them!
Having said that a comment made during the finals was "I'd rather be playing for 10k than do this again." It's definitely is a different kind of pressure when people, your teammates, are counting on you and feeling like you've let them down if you lost than just taking cash, even large amounts of cash, out of your own pocket.
In close matches you could see where being mentally prepared for the MOMENT, being use to the experience of PRESSURE and having had to perform under it, really made a difference.
Our guys had more experience and it showed.
Finals.
Hill-Hill. (Sort of. If our guy lost it'll go to a tie-breaker set.)
Plays a lock up safety.
Gets ball in hand and runs out but miscues on the 8-ball. (It goes in but no shape on the 9-ball.)
Makes a seriously hard cut on the 9-ball for the win.
We won!
I'll do another post on the mental game soon but for now I just wanna bask in the glory of winning the league. (Plus I'm in Vegas right now and exhausted.)
:-)
