Written by Part-time writer Christy
It’s the POOL WARS! After (what I heard was) crazy marketing antics of two overgrown kids thrashing around with “light sabers” in the comm hall, the blocks gathered to cheer and support their teams in the E-shack.
For the first battle of the war, it was the 9-ball qualifying round for the individual contestants. 28 participants took part in the match, eventually 8 of them qualified for the finals. Their average timing was 1 minute 40 seconds. (Wow!) Of course, this was slow compared to Swee Foo who managed to finish his qualifying round in 2.38 seconds, having scored a golden break. Perhaps his luck can be attributed to the fact that he just completed his other FYP in block A (Heh heh.)
Lady luck did not just shine on Swee Foo, but also on his C-Towner Matt who had managed to ease into the finals based on pure luck. The sleepyhead who needed at least ten plus people to wake him up for the finals (Matt) was lucky enough to pocket balls in whatever pocket he wanted despite being a noob at pool. Alas, luck did not shine long enough on them as eventually it was Vimal and Michael (Block A), Visoth (Block B) and Calvin (Block E) whom proceeded to the semifinals.
After the grueling semi-finals, the match boiled down to one between Vimal and Visoth. It was a race between 2 matches for them. It was a seemingly professional match that drew gasps from the crowd. With both of them equally matched in skills, the match eventually boiled down to luck. In the end, Visoth, not moved by pressure, eventually emerged victorious. Visoth (aka the new Luke Skywalker) would also like to dedicate his win to his girlfriend, an equally good pool player, Zhen Jun. (Hahaha!)
For the group category, Acers and C-Towners had a rematch in order to determine who would move on into the finals to meet the undisputed Deeblockers. With one win and one loss, it boiled down to the girls, Wen Yuan (Acer) and Qiu Ping (C-Towner) match to determine the finalist. Unfortunately, for Qiu Ping, who was initially winning, saw her ball ricocheting and knocking the black 8 ball into the pocket. With this, it was the Acers who proceeded to the finals.
It was the rematch of last year finals – Block D and Block A again. This time round, the Dee-blockers, having missed out on the championship last year were back with a vengeance. Led by the self-proclaimed international player Bear, with Kerry and Sheryl, beat the Acers trio of Wen Yuan, Vimal and Michael hands down with the score of 3-0. With this, the Dee-blockers were crowned the Jedi Knights! Congratulations!
With that, the pool wars were officially declared over. Jaden, the Vice Chairperson of HAC would like to thank all HAC members who had made this event possible. His scandal and boss, Chairperson of HAC Jie Sheng would also like to add on that he hopes that it would be possible that there would be separate girls and guys individual categories for the pool wars next year so that more female Shearites would get to showcase their skills. I concur – more eye candies for me!
P.S. Comments like the “the pool table is too old” and “they ought to change the pool table” comments could be heard throughout the matches. (*Hint HINT* SCRC, JCRC and DOHA)
P.P.S. Hm, I think I also heard comments like the E-shack is too small, the board games are not enough, the computers are too old and…