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Date: 7/28/2016
EAST LONGMEADOW – The East Longmeadow senior billiards team recently won the spring 2016 Billiards Senior League tournament against a team from Agawam.
Frank Thetreault, the East Longmeadow team captain, told Reminder Publications at the end of the season the two teams were tied – both had 67 wins and 45 loses.
A final playoff game determined the champion.
Team member Larry Bradley described the final game as a “fairly strong win,” but tense.
He added, “I want to give Agawam credit. They are a fairly strong team and played very well during the year. So we knew we had a tough match ahead of us. So I think there was some pressure that we may have put on ourselves to do well. I think we played very well and I don’t think they played as well as they could have.”
Thetreault said he and his six teammates were very happy for the win, but the main reason they play the game is for fun.
“Even if it’s a loss that day, you still accomplish things,” he added. “You still have a breakthrough and you still improved somewhat.”
The East Longmeadow team was founded about four years ago, Thetreault explained.
During that time he’s seen himself and his teammates grow as players.
“You can’t play every day without improving,” Thetreault noted. “It’s like with every sport – you stay at a plateau for a while and then every now and then you have a breakthrough and something like a light will go on, ‘Wow, I’ve been doing this thing wrong for 10 years and now I’m going to start doing it right.’”
On any typical weekday morning the East Longmeadow Senior Center’s billiard room is alive with the sound of billiard balls shot across pool tables. Thetreault, who was wearing a T-shirt with “Rack ‘em up” written above a crest of two pool cues shaped in an x, said players from other communities such as Hampden often frequent the pool hall.
“I pretty much drop in every day to see who will be playing – to see if I might get a game going [and] to see if I can get somebody else interested in it … Usually there’s people every morning stopping in,” he added.
He described the community that’s been created around billiards as a “loose comradery.”
He added, “I wouldn’t say we hang out after billiards, but … we know all the different people at senior centers who play pool.”
Thetreault said beginners are welcome to play billiards with the group any given weekday morning.
“Right away we would get you into the game,” he noted. “You wouldn’t have to sit around and watch and wait and everything else.”
Thetreault said Council on Aging Director Carolyn Brennan is supportive of the poolroom.
"If we ask for something, within reason, we usually get it,” he noted.