Omaha

Alright, I know, I'm way behind. Here in Toronto I only have internet access at the pool room so it is kinda hard to get stuff done. I only have half of my pictures from San Diego uploaded so I will talk about the Omaha Home Show that I attended a few weeks ago.

In mid-March the WPBA contacted the players and wanted eight players to play in an exhibition tournament at the Omaha Home Show. So of course, me being me, I said of course! Little did I know that I would love New York City so much that I wouldn't want to leave! At 6 am on March 25th I left Manhattan...I needed to be in Omaha by 5pm on Thursday, March 26th....again, for those of you needing a map to know how far apart New York and Nebraska are..here is a clue...24 hours! Lucky for me, home was on the way so I stopped in to say hi to Mom and Dad and do some laundry and get about five hours of sleep. Then back in the car!





Another thing that I didn't know was that there is absolutely nothing in between Bloomington, Il and Omaha, NE. The one cool thing that I saw were the many huge wind farms.





The format for the event was supposed to be a double elimination tournament played over three days of the home show...well, since only four of the WPBA players, Myself, Monica Webb, Helena Thornfeldt, and Belinda Calhoun showed up to play it was changed. Instead of that we played a round robin format for two days and then semi-final and final matches. So as you can tell, it was a lot of playing!

I got there just in the knick of time on Thursday for the pro-am. It was tons of fun with three people per team and playing as fast as we can. My team unfortunately lost hill-hill in the final. :(

Now on to the play. All of us played each other twice...beginning at 10am each day. Races to seven the first day and races to nine the other two days. We had a nice little arena set up with a 4x8 Olhausen table provided by Alkar Billiard and Barstools.



My first match was Belinda Calhoun. I played pretty well and won pretty big, 7-2 I think. Next match I played Helena...all I can say is wow, I want no part of playing her on that table ever again! She tortured me 7-1. My final match of the day was Monica. Unfortunately I was ahead pretty good and dogged it pretty bad...she beat me 7-6. So going into day two I was ranked 3rd.

The next day we started again with the same order of play. Again, I beat Belinda, lost to Helena, and this time got the best of Monica. Unfortunately my record wasn't all that great and I was stuck playing in the 3/4th match with Belinda. Monica and Helena had the best records so they were playing in the final. Again, I got the best of Belinda so I finished 3rd. Monica and Helena fought it out and Monica was the eventual 2009 Omaha Home Show champ! I guess it was a prediction for San Diego!!

Way to go Monica!!

So thank you to Brian Hamburger who organized everything and to the Omaha Home Builders Association for bring us to Omaha. It was also nice to meet a lot of new people. I know some of you guys read this so hello and thanks for watching, hanging out and getting to know us a little bit!