Right?on cue

It all started seven years ago for Brock Noteboom after he won some money in Las Vegas.

Noteboom and some buddies went in on a pool table with the winnings. Just a hobby to pass the time — at first.

“After six months, we wanted to see how good we really were,” said Noteboom, 28, a Huntington Beach resident. “We went down to a local tournament and I got third. Ever since then, I’ve loved playing tournaments. I caught the bug, started playing in leagues.”

He plays in leagues run by the American Poolplayers Assn., Sunday nights at the Q Club in Costa Mesa and Thursday nights at the Blue Dolphin in Dana Point.

Next month, Noteboom will be on a much-bigger stage at the 2009 United States Amateur Championships, beginning Nov. 6 in Tampa, Fla.

He was one of 53 men vying to make it out of the qualifier Sept. 19 at Styx Billiards in Rancho Cucamonga.

In the finals, he beat the 2003 U.S. amateur champion, Bruce Choyce. It was eight games of eight-ball followed by 13 games of nine-ball. The winner was the first to win 11 games — known in pool as a “race to 11.”

“After eight-ball, it was 5-3, his lead,” Noteboom said. “Then we went to nine-ball, and I won seven in a row, so I was up, 10-5. He started playing really good and came back. I won in the last game. It was really satisfying. My goal was just to keep up with him and not get blown out. I just took it one game at a time and all of a sudden I was on the hill and I just needed one more.

“It was really cool to beat a former champion. He told me, ‘You’ll do very well out there.’ That was a nice thing to hear from a guy of his caliber.”

Getting there may be the challenge.

This is the part where Noteboom himself is a bit behind the eight ball.

It’s an amateur tournament, which means there’s no big cash prize to speak of.

Noteboom has to pay his own way there. His room is taken care of, but he still needs to foot the bill for necessities like a rental car and food.

Noteboom, who works in insurance, has two daughters, Kaylah, 2, and Kylee, 7 months. Money is tight for him and his wife, Jessica, due to some recent emergency medical bills.

Brock Noteboom and another Orange County pool player, Liza Gazmen of Lake Forest, have been looking at organizing a fundraiser to help with the costs.

Gazmen, 38, lived in Surf City but moved south and runs the South Orange County franchise of the APA. She qualified for the U.S. Amateur Championships in the women’s division.

This was her third time attempting to qualify for the U.S. Amateurs.

“I guess third time’s the charm,” she said. “I played all right, I guess. Brock played well. He beat a few really good players.”

Noteboom also has a background in golf, which he played at Edison High and Orange Coast College.

But one of the benefits of pool, he said, is that Jessica Noteboom also likes to play, even if there simply isn’t as much time to devote these days.

“I don’t play nearly as much as I used to when I was coming up,” Brock Noteboom said. “I used to play every night, and there was a tournament circuit I’d play. Now I play league night and that’s about it. It’s tough to maintain a consistent game but my wife can play, too. It makes it a lot more fun and worth it.

She doesn’t play a lot of the competitive stuff but she still plays in league.”

He said some of the stereotypes the public has of pool, like smoky back rooms and shady characters, can be true. But these days, Noteboom doesn’t need to be a hustler.

“I like the competition, I guess,” he said. “There’s money players all over the place, and I used to be that guy. It was $5 to enter a tournament, to win $150, and there was always gambling afterward. I loved it. With my kids and my family now, it doesn’t appeal to me as much as it did. With these leagues, everybody can play and anybody can win [which is the APA slogan]. They’ve made it a more respectable skill game, instead of not having a fancy stick so nobody knows how good you are, so you’re hustling them.

“When I was playing for money, it was always, ‘Oh, don’t do this, or, ‘Oh, I’m better than that guy.’ I don’t really care anymore. I just want to play as good as I can play. That’s what’s cool about this amateur tournament, there’s no money in it and you play for the title.”

Noteboom met with Issa Abdelahad, general manager of the Q Club, on Monday.

He said later that the Q Club is going to help with some sponsorship money and allow him to practice there for free leading up to the event.

“Of course, we’re proud of him,” Abdelahad said. “I’ve been here almost 18 years. I remember one kid, he couldn’t hold a stick, and he comes back and he’s very good. People come back here.”

Noteboom is still seeking donations and he has a PayPal account set up under the e-mail address bnoteboom@farmers agent.com.

For now, he will keep practicing as much as he can.

“If my wife played golf, I’d probably still be playing golf all the time,” he said. “But she likes pool, too.”