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J. The Jewish Information of Northern California through JTA — For JoAnn Mason Parker, enjoying pool comes simply as naturally as dealing with a knife and fork.
“You’re not going to drop it, as a result of you already know what you’re doing,” the previous baby prodigy stated, explaining the analogy throughout a current video chat from Westchester, New York. Her mini Labradoodle, Rivkah, sat close by. “It’s not exhausting.”
The previous US Open 9-Ball champion describes her fashion as “aggressive” — each defensively and offensively. (In pool, offense is once you pocket balls, and protection is once you place the cue ball in such a manner as to drawback your opponent.) Her motto, she stated, is to “make the sport straightforward for me. And exhausting for you.”
On October 24, Parker turned the primary billiards participant inducted into the Jewish Sports activities Corridor of Fame of Northern California, a nonprofit group that acknowledges excellence in sports activities, and in addition fingers out scholarships annually to deserving student-athletes.
“Once I noticed what they stand for, I felt like I needed to be part of it,” Parker stated.
Right this moment, 26 years after retiring from the professional circuit, Parker, 53, is eyeing a comeback. She has been enjoying (and profitable) newbie tournaments in New York, understanding and envisioning a return to competitors on the highest stage.
“I’ve acquired the itch,” she stated.
A pure athlete (Parker ran observe and performed volleyball, softball and, later in life, golf), she gravitated towards billiards at a really early age. She emulated and discovered from her father, Harvey Mason, a professional participant and coach who educated the likes of Tony Robles (“The Silent Murderer”) and Sammy Guzman.
“Once I was 4 years outdated, I all the time copied no matter my dad was doing,” she stated. “I used to be a daddy’s lady proper from the beginning.”
Whereas watching him play, she would get some early teaching. Harvey would usually inform her, “Don’t watch the balls, JoAnn, watch me,” Parker stated. “Take a look at the machine. Then you definitely’ll understand how to do that sooner or later.”
And he or she had apparent pure items. On the age of 5, she stated, she ran her first rack of balls (that means, she pocketed each with out lacking).
It was on a bar-size desk at a pool corridor in Amsterdam, New York. Parker’s dad and mom, each from the Bronx, in these days ventured upstate for fishing, horse racing, and billiards every summer time with the household. She and her older sister, Nancy, got quarters to maintain them occupied.
She may barely attain the desk, so she shot sidearm.
When the women stored returning to their dad and mom for extra quarters, their father requested what was occurring: “JoAnn simply retains making all of the balls within the gap!” Nancy stated to his astonishment.
Parker, who went on to develop into generally known as the “Battling Magnificence” in skilled billiards, earned her status as a prodigy across the time she sank all these balls in Amsterdam. She began enjoying on the newbie circuit as a child and gained her first main event, the “Massive Apple” Beginner 8-Ball title, at 13.
Whereas nonetheless a teen, Parker went professional, becoming a member of the Ladies’s Skilled Billiards Tour after highschool. She gained the McDermott Masters in 1988. Two years later, in 1990, she took the US Open, essentially the most aggressive occasion within the nation, beating the number-one ranked participant on the planet. She was the New York State billiards champion for six years operating.
And all that was solely her first profession. Much less identified was her second calling: for 12 years, Parker taught pre-kindergarten at Katz Hillel Day College in Boca Raton, Florida, which her son, William, attended. The motto of the Fashionable Orthodox faculty: “The place excellence in Torah and common research is our ardour.”
Parker went from the “Battling Magnificence” to “Morah JoAnn,” Hebrew for instructor.
My billiards background, and my competitiveness, made me a manner higher instructor. Means higher
“My billiards background, and my competitiveness, made me a manner higher instructor,” Parker stated. “Means higher.”
Raised in a secular Jewish household, Parker moved to Monticello, New York, when she was 13. Right this moment, she speaks with a definite New York accent that brings to thoughts baked ziti as a lot because it does bagels and lox.
Parker’s maternal grandparents emigrated from Lithuania and Austria, and her paternal grandparents had been from the Bronx. Her grandmother Gertrude labored in a Jewish bakery known as Sherblooms.
Parker is proudly “99.9 % Ashkenazi,” she stated, citing a current DNA check. She peppers her speech with Yiddish phrases, like “Yiddishe kop,” or a Jewish mind-set or behaving.
Her husband, Robert Parker, comes from the hotelier Parker household that owned the Harmony Resort Resort, the famend Borscht Belt resort within the Catskills, till its closure amid appreciable controversy in 1998.
At age 14, Parker competed in a event known as the World Straight Pool Championship, held in 1981 on the swanky Roosevelt Resort in New York Metropolis, the place she was going to face the highest newbie participant on the planet, Swedish-born Ewa Mataya, who was 4 years older. The occasion was a impolite awakening, of types.
“I’m strolling in there — I appear like an angel. I’m in a really fairly ivory-colored gown,” Parker stated. However “there’s a world of distinction” between a 14-year-old and an 18-year-old, she stated. “I’m a lady, and she or he’s a lady.”
“I used to be going into the lion’s den,” Parker added with amusing. “Lamb to the slaughter.”
She held her personal, however misplaced the match.
Right this moment, Parker’s self-confidence may very well be described as whole, and her competitiveness — however billiards’ status as a cerebral pursuit — as paying homage to a heavyweight boxer.
“I need to put on them down,” she says of her opponents. “I preserve them on the lengthy rail, which is a really tough place to be. I preserve making them bridge over balls. Maintain making them kick backwards at balls. Make it exhausting.”
Then, “once you’re exhausted and worn out, I’m going for the kill,” she added. “With a smile!”
Not like athletes in big-market sports activities, skilled pool gamers, even among the finest, want gumption and a few creativity to make a dwelling. They piece collectively revenue from event winnings, endorsements, educating charges, and different compensation from appearances at trick reveals and company occasions.
After highschool, Parker skipped school in favor of what she known as the “faculty of pool” (she would return later for a level in early childhood schooling). To assist herself, she labored part-time at an area Italian restaurant.
Along with her gregarious character, she was identified for charming her prospects. She acquired her first massive break from a Greek buyer named Archie Papacaralumbus. He owned a small enterprise on the town — 3-D Block Co., which manufactured cement blocks — and noticed promise in Parker. He supplied to be her first professional sponsor.
“He was the nicest man, he and his spouse,” Parker stated. “They weren’t born in America. And somebody had given him an enormous break when he got here to this nation. So he needed to present me a break.”
Somebody had given him an enormous break when he got here to this nation. So he needed to present me a break
In a brief skilled profession, she notched wins not solely on the McDermott Masters and the US Open in 9-Ball, however at a half-dozen New York state championships and plenty of different tournaments from New England to China. She retired at 27, after giving beginning to her son William, then returned briefly in 2010, competing in a 9-Ball event known as the Tiger 9-Ball. And gained.
Of being a Jew on the professional billiards circuit, Parker pointed to among the heroes of the American sport, position fashions akin to Mike Sigel and Barry Behrman.
Nonetheless, there have been instances, notably within the American South, when she felt uneasy listening to the chatter within the room, as seemingly the one Jew there. She virtually all the time wore her chai necklace whereas competing.
“The minute you’d hear feedback about Black individuals, you already know you’re on the radar to be subsequent,” she stated. “If that’s how these persons are speaking, you simply realize it.”
The minute you’d hear feedback about Black individuals, you already know you’re on the radar to be subsequent
Probably the most pivotal second of her profession got here on the 1990 US Open 9-Ball event in Norfolk, Virginia. She wore her chai necklace then, too. Probably the most prestigious skilled event within the nation had 42 entrants that 12 months, the most important area in its historical past.
In her first 5 matches, Parker tore via the competitors, profitable every time. However within the closing, she was thought-about a critical underdog as she confronted the No. 1–ranked participant on the planet.
At shut to 6 toes tall, her competitor towered over Parker, who’s 5′ 4″. And he or she was sponsored by Brunswick, the largest title in pool.
It was Ewa Mataya, 9 years after their first assembly.
In movies of the match, Parker’s face is relaxed, considered one of full focus.
She opened the primary sport with a strong break, sending a ball into the nook pocket. She took her time earlier than her second shot, stalking the desk, strategizing.
Parker didn’t have a transparent shot, so she performed protection. She kissed the cue ball simply barely, nudging it right into a place that might make it practically unattainable for Mataya to make her first shot. It labored — after which Parker went on offense. She ran the desk, pocketing every ball within the right order, profitable the essential first sport of the match. She would go on to win, 11 video games to eight.
Afterward, when an interviewer requested her how she felt, she acquired choked up. “I’ve waited for this second for a really very long time. It’s been my dream to win this event,” she stated.
Greater than 30 years later, after elevating a son (who’s now 27) and a 12-year detour in Jewish schooling, Parker is trying again to billiards, and has been coaching and recording demonstration movies.
Although she cared little about health when on tour in her 20s (“we’d be going to Denny’s, consuming every kind of rubbish”), for the reason that summer time, she’s been rousing herself round 5:30 for early morning cardio — she sprints up a steep hill, then walks down, moving into the mindset to compete once more.
“No one’s doing what I’m doing. I’m not afraid to really feel that ache operating up that hill,” she stated. “I have a look at my opponents and I say to myself: They don’t have a proper to beat me.”
In her 50s, she’s a unique participant. However pool isn’t like different sports activities. She believes she will nonetheless be pretty much as good as she was 30 years in the past and might win one other US Open or comparable event.
“You can not probably anticipate to be a greater shot-maker than you had been once you had been 23. Perhaps you might be pretty much as good,” she stated. “However you may undoubtedly be smarter. And you may play the sport with mind. To make the sport straightforward for me. And exhausting for you.”
This story was initially revealed in J. The Jewish Information of Northern California, and is reprinted with permission.
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