In This Game, No One’s Behind the 8-Ball

The first thing you notice at the start of the St. Jude Medical Center 8-ball Classic Wheel Chair Championship is the quiet.

Motionless wheelchairs line the pool tables on faux leopard skin carpet. The balls are perfectly racked and still. A curl of cigarette smoke hangs in the air near a huge window that provides a view of the bustling Brea Mall.

The coin toss to determine who will win the first break barely registers on the felt.

Then the snap of the cue ball hitting the first set shatters the silence, launching a stress-filled day of competition as 32 men roll around the hall, vying for $4,000 in cash and prizes, including a $1,500 handmade, mother-of-pearl cue.

“It becomes pretty cutthroat when you want to win,” says Darrell Ray, 50, of Hollywood. “It’s like any other sport. People have tempers.”

Ray and others gathered at Diamonds Billiards on Saturday for the Southern California Wheelchair Billiards Assn.’s third annual championship, which continues today.

Many of the players said they prefer billiards to many other activities that have been adapted for the disabled, such as rugby and skiing, because pool does not require cumbersome equipment. It’s usually just a player and a cue.

“People in wheelchairs have been playing pool a long time,” Ray said.

The tables are standard height. Pool players with more severe disabilities sometimes add a special handle or a small bridge to make shots easier while others cross the cue over their arm to balance it. But the game changes little from the seat of the wheelchair, according to competitors.

“In most disabled sports, the effort is to simulate the sport with your own modifications,” Ray said. “This is a straight-out sport. There’s no modifications here.”

Many of the players said they enjoy being able to compete with others.

“You can play against anybody,” said Chris Gernux, 29, of Brea. “I mostly play against able-bodied people. It’s equal.”

The 3-year-old Southern California Wheelchair Billiards Assn. follows standard 8-ball rules established by the Billiards Congress of America. The key difference is that the cue ball must hit a rail during each shot.

“The rules are the same but you have to keep one cheek in the seat,” said Keith Lawson, 34, of Irvine, playing on the one-leg-on-the-ground standard in regular pool.

Lawson hosts about four tournaments a year. He started the league after attending a disabled tournament in Arizona in 1993.

The upper-body movement involved in pool is a form of exercise and also gives players something on which to focus their attention--which is particularly helpful to the recently injured, competitors said.

“It’s good therapy and something to do,” said Roy Collings, 27, of Garden Grove.

“The nice thing about pool is it doesn’t place a strain on your body,” said Lawson, who also plays rugby.

This year’s tourney is the first with a major sponsor, St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton. Diamonds Billiards in Brea provided the hall for free.

“We have the goal in mind to create opportunities for people in wheelchairs to participate in as many recreational opportunities as possible,” said Cynthia Crane, a recreational therapist at the hospital.