Thanks for Coming

That's how I felt at my most recent tournament: "Thanks for Donating," is more like it. :) . Why? Because I was out in two. Although, I lost each match only hill-hill!! hehe. Description of my feelings about this tournament: Hope. Why? Read below - I really did have a good experience.

Fast Eddies Billiards, College Station, Texas

I obviously still have a lot to learn (that's why pool and life are so wonderful!), but I did make some important strides (in my two whole matches! lol).

My first match, I played the eventual winner, Amanda Lampert.

Amanda Lampert, the winner, photo taken early Sunday morning.

I was down 0-2 - she was playing SO well! Then a few misses by her allowed me to win two games and it was 2-2. I was not in a good frame of mind because I let some things get to me. At 3-5 her, I make a conscious effort to have fun and enjoy myself - because I was going down a bad, dark, fast path to nowhere and was not playing well because of it. To my surprise, I started to enjoy the match more after I made that decision to myself. To be able to overcome and turn around such strong emotional feelings during a match, was a great feeling of success. Even though I lost 7-6 because I didn't smoothly stroke the 8-ball to win, the other learning experience was I really am cable of "reversing" my emotions. More importantly, I am happy to report that I could recognize during the match that I needed to do something about my emotions. I don't know how successful I will be at this in the future (I bet I will get more practice, tho!), but it was nice to recognize it early AND do something about it. Amazing!!

My next match, all I did was goof up - make poor decisions and found myself trying to catch her coin instead of playing P O O L. I tried hard to bare down and play well, but I was still making too many errors and in a race to 5, it's too short of a race to take things for granted and not stick to your powerfully important pre-shot routine.

I managed to get some photos of the guys division before we started our tournament Sunday morning: Click HERE. Good thing I took the photos before the girls played, because after I lost, I took my hardly-used pool cue back and drove my a$$ back home.

And I here I am, right outside College Station, Texas, stopping by to get me some fast food. I have that, "why are you taking my photo right now?" look.

Until Next Time.