Captains Log, May 5, 2021

Hello Poolplayers!!!! We hope you’re all doing well! We’ve missed you, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel!

This will be a lengthy newsletter, but please read the entire thing as there is a lot to discuss. Now that California is starting to open things up, it’s time to start prepping for what is going to be a very hectic restart to the San Diego APA. When we last played APA, it was March of 2020. That was more than a year ago, and we know many of you haven’t even seen your pool cues since then. It’s time to start dusting them off and getting them back in playing shape, because once we do get started back up, we will have a very aggressive schedule. It will be recommended that if you play in any of our Showdown Series formats that you start looking for places to practice and get yourselves back in playing shape quickly. Showdown series formats are Ladies 8 Ball , 8 Ball Doubles , 9 Ball Doubles , Masters , Jack n Jill 8 Ball Doubles , Wheelchair and Captains. We’ll discuss the importance of this farther down in this newsletter.

We are tentatively scheduling the restart of session play for the week of June 13th. If we are allowed to start sooner than that, we certainly will. The current plan is to finish the Spring Session 2020. There were 6 weeks of play remaining for all standard format divisions, but with this late restart and the deadline to get qualified for the 2021 APA World Pool Championships , we are going to have to play every week once we get restarted. There may still be some mask requirements and social distancing protocols we will have to follow upon our return and we will be following APA’s “Play Safe” protocols , so watch for future newsletters for more information on how we can all do our part to create a safe playing environment for everyone.

It is membership renewal time. Several of our league members have already renewed for 2021, but once we restart everyone will need to be paid up in membership by the 4th week of the restart. Many of our league members renewed during the t-shirt promotion. We have the t-shirts and will be announcing pick up times later in this newsletter. Membership renewals are $25 for all league members. Any league members competing in Showdown Series qualifying events before July 1 will need to be paid up in membership before competing in those events.

We will soon start reaching out to all teams to make sure everyone is ready for the restart. There will be a lot of teams in need of adding players, including qualified teams. APA is willing to work with qualified teams, but you should be trying to find established (more than 20 lifetime matches) players to fill roster spots, as we’re pretty sure APA will NOT allow anyone with less than 20 matches that get added to your team to compete in World Championship events. Please communicate with your teams before we call you so that we can get through this process as soon as possible. If you know your team’s plans, you can help us out by sending us an email at bfrankland@apaleagues.com or giving us a call at 619-303-0183. The sooner we know your plans, the better we can sort out any scheduling issues that might arise should any teams be unable to continue. We’re sure you all would like to have accurate and firm schedules in place as soon as possible! Thank you in advance for your assistance! We appreciate each and every one of you!

The Poolplayer Championships are scheduled at the Westgate Resort and Casino in Las Vegas on August 5-9th. The 8 Ball Classic is August 5-7 and the 9 Ball Shootout is August 7-9. The 8 Ball Classic and 9 Ball Shootout are APA’s Single’s Championship events that features players that competed in Singles Local and Regional qualifying events. If you qualified for one of these events, this is now the scheduled time your events will take place. That’s less than 2 months to get you in playing shape to compete in these events.

The Showdown Series events will also be taking place during the Poolplayer Championships. Normally, some of these events would take place during the World Pool Championships, but because of the shutdown they had to move some things around to make it work. Here are the dates for the Showdown Series events:

8 Ball Doubles Championship- August 7-10 

9 Ball Doubles Championship- August 5-6 

Masters Championships- August 10-14 

Ladies 8 Ball Championships- August 8-12 

Captains Championships- August 8-11 

Jack n Jill Doubles Championships- August 10-13 

Because we have been shut down since last year, APA is granting us an extension on the deadline to submit our forms to July 12th. That means that all of these Showdown qualifier events must be done before July 12th so that all necessary paperwork for these events can be turned in on time. While the 8 Ball and 9 Ball Doubles leagues were in the final week of playoffs when we shut down, we still had several weeks of play left for Masters and Ladies 8 Ball. We will have to make some sacrifices with these divisions in order to send teams to the National events. So, Masters Divisions and Ladies divisions will have every participating team advance to the City Championship Qualifiers. We will still finish the sessions as normal for end of session prize payout, but the qualifier will have to take place before we finish. If we do the math, we will have our restart on June 13th and we will have 4 weeks to get teams qualified for all of these events. That’s why we’re telling you all to start practicing now. Also, while California APA was shut down for more than a year, many parts of the country didn’t take much time off at all. They didn’t fall out of practice like our league did. So if you do qualify for the National events, you may be competing against teams that hardly had any time off from the pool tables at all. But, it’s still an amazing opportunity to qualify for these tournaments and play in a World Championship event.

Here is the good news for the Showdown Series events: We have 5 slots for the Ladies 8 Ball Championship. We have 5 slots for the Masters Championship. We have 3 slots for the 8 Ball Doubles Championship. We have 2 slots for the 9 Ball Doubles Championship. We have 3 slots for the Team Captains Championship. We have 1 slot for the Jack n Jill 8 Ball Doubles Championship. We are paying room and entry fee for 2 8 Ball Doubles slots, 1 9 Ball Doubles slot, 2 Ladies 8 Ball slots and 2 Masters Championship slot. The rest of these will be available based on order of finish in the respective tournaments and based on interest in playing in these events. We will have rooms on reserve at the Westgate that you can pay for and teams will also be responsible for the team entry fees and greens fees. Here are our tentative dates for these events:

June 19th 8 Ball Doubles Championship Qualifier

June 20th 9 Ball Doubles Championship Qualifier

June 26th Ladies 8 Ball Championship Qualifier

June 27th Masters Championship Qualifier

July 10th Team Captains Championship Qualifier

July 11th Jack n Jill 8 Ball Doubles Championship Qualifier

If that isn’t enough participation in the August APA Championship events, we also cannot forget about the main event at the APA Poolplayer Championships. We have the following players eligible to compete in the biggest Singles Championship in the world:

APA 8 Ball Classic (August 5-7)

Angela Elliott, Pam Cabaniss, David Salyer, Ces Ralston, Joel Kindem, York Lackey, Zane Gardner, Kai Fellows and John Pasquarella

APA 9 Ball Shootout (August 7-9)

Shauna Hawk, Dayne Walker, Brian Wroolie, John Pasquarella, Cynthia Walker, Michael Hartman, Darryn Lewis and Paul Langley

We wish the best of luck to all of the players that will be competing in these events.

Currently qualified to compete in the October 2021 Fall Singles Regional, which is the first qualifying window for the 2022 APA Poolplayer Championships:

8 Ball- Sean Ahlers, Edward Arciniega, Laura Barreiro, Luis Carranza, Julio Casarrubias, David Espinoza, Shawn Findley, Jesse Gallegos, Melisa Goldstein, Brandon Haley, Harry Kochhar, Martin Salgado, Erin Shulman, Nayan Tamrakar and Brittany Wojciehowski

9-Ball- Julius Raymond Arellano, Ed Cabiles, Julio Casarrubias, Brian Cragin, Kai Fellows, Shawn Findley, Trevor Giles, John Goldsby, Melisa Goldstein, Lisa Gonzalez, Brandon Haley, Shauna Hawk, Angela Kinney, Darryn Lewis, Robert Tate and Brittany Wojciehowski.

The qualifying window for this first Singles Regional Qualifier will close on June 15th. The new window for the Spring Singles Regional will open on June 16th. The Fall Regional will most likely be the first weekend in October.

The World Pool Championships are scheduled to take place at the Westgate Resort and Casino on October 21-30. In order to meet deadlines for these events, we will have to finish up our 6 weeks of regular Spring Session play, 2 weeks of playoffs, and then jump right into the Blast on August 14-15 and then 9 Ball City Championships on August 21-22 and 8 Ball City Championships on August 28-29. We will be qualifying 5 eight ball teams and 4 nine balls teams for the World Pool Championships. San Diego will have a lot of representation at both of the APA events this year. So start crackin’ some racks! It’s almost tournament season!

We plan to restart the Junior Academy in mid-July and finish the 5 weeks of play that were on the schedule when we shut down in 2020 by mid-September. The exact dates are yet to be determined, but we will be reaching out to each team and to all of our fabulously talented volunteer instructors as we get closer to July. Again, if you know your plans, please help us out be sending us an email or giving us a call (see bottom of newsletter for contact info).

WOW!!!! That’s a lot of stuff going on after having more than a year off of no league play whatsoever. It’s going to be very hard for us to do all of this, but it’s been our pleasure to serve all of your pool playing needs over the last 25 years. And with that, it’s now time to segue into the future of the San Diego APA. Jill and I have been doing this for a very long time. We have enjoyed doing this for all of you for so long. Sadly, life things happen and we have had our fair share of life things happening in our family. Jill lost her father and her brother within a 2 month time frame only a few months ago. These were the only two family members she had left that she grew up with. My father has had 2 cancer surgeries in the last 3 months. We’re both originally from Illinois and much of our family is still in that area. I’ve been away from my parents for over 25 years now, and time is precious, so we need to get back there to be able to spend as much time with them as we can. It’s been a very tough decision to retire from the SDAPA, as our relationships with our league members have made this more than just a “job” or “business”. You all mean so very much to us and it is extremely important to us that whoever takes over the league continues to provide the same quality of customer service you’ve come to expect from the San Diego APA. We are currently in discussions with potential buyers, and once we’ve made an agreement on a deal, we will let you all know more details. We anticipate that the league will change hands sometime in early September. Just know that we would not simply hand this league over to anybody. It will be important that they maintain the same level of integrity, professionalism and enjoyment that you have come to expect in the San Diego APA. And we assure you that we will be leaving you in excellent hands.

As we get closer to the restart, we will be reaching out to our teams to make sure you have your rosters set and that your location is ready to host you for league play once again. If anyone knows of players looking to play on teams, I’m sure many of our teams will be in dire need of assistance in filling out their rosters. Please help them to contact us or direct them to our SDAPA Team Building Group on Facebook. Sadly, we have lost some of our league members to death, relocation and other personal reasons that have left some of our teams very shorthanded. We hope to save every team, but the reality is that there may be some schedule changes on our return. Again, you can help alleviate scheduling issues by letting us know your plans as soon as possible. Also, if your team is struggling to stay together, check the Facebook Group and/or contact us for help. The sooner we know, the more we can do to try to help you keep your team going.

Everyone will be required to compete at their last skill level. As mentioned previously, some league members haven’t even seen their pool cues in over a year while others have been playing quite a bit. If you know you have improved and your skill is better than your current APA skill level, it is your and your team’s responsibility to raise your skill level to reflect your true ability.

We are extremely saddened to announce the passing of SDAPA league member Brian Jones. Brian was an asset to our league in every sense of the word. He was very active in our league, competing on 6 different teams when we last stopped playing. He was the very definition of dedicated. If he wasn’t competing in a match, he was practicing or playing in a tournament. You could always find him on a pool table somewhere. He would always show up early for a match and get some table time in so that he would be prepared for whoever he matched up against. He was a skill level 6 in 8 Ball and 9 Ball, which is rock solid for a man who was only a month away from his 80th birthday when he passed on April 29th. His list of host locations that he called home in our last session were: Kelly’s Pub El Cajon, On Cue Billiards, The Library and Pockets Billiards and Brew. He played out of many other locations during his time in the APA, which started in San Diego in 2012, but his APA experience goes all the way back to 1993 in Birmingham AL. He even got his son, Kenton to join our league in 2018, and they were teammates on Break n Fun out of Pockets, a City Championship qualified team as we close out our Spring 2020 session. Brian played in more than 900 APA matches. Our sincerest condolences go out to his friends, family and teammates.

We have changed our electronic payment option from paying through the SDAPA Payment Portal or through sdapa_office@cox.net (Venmo, PayPal…) to either paying through the APA app using Stripe; using bill pay or money transfer through your bank; or by sending cash, check or money order through the mail. These will be the only options, so if you were paying fees using our portal or using Venmo or PayPal, etc. you will need to plan to switch to one of the abovementioned methods. Paying through Stripe on the APA app will be just as easy (if not easier) than paying through the portal we set up before paying through the app was available.

We will also soon be introducing the scoring app to a few of our divisions as we begin the transition to electronic scoring!! Yay! We will beta test a few divisions and then start introducing it league wide in the coming sessions. We know you all must be super excited about this and anxious to get it in place here in San Diego! It’s coming soon!

We’ve moved recently and will be losing all of our cox.net email addresses. See below for instructions on how to email score sheets and contact the league office via email. The League Office phone number has NOT changed.

While the League Office phone number didn’t change, we did lose all of our voice mails since we didn’t realize after we made the move that our voice mail wasn’t set up properly. So if you left us a message, we didn’t get it. Please call us back and we should be able to help you now that voice mail is now set up. We are very sorry for this inconvenience!

Renewal Promotion T-Shirt Pick Up Times:

76 of our SDAPA league members did the t-shirt renewal promotion. We have your shirts and will be at the following locations and times for you to pick them up. If you cannot be there, please have someone be there for you as we are limited in when we can be available to get these shirts to you.

Saturday, May 8th from 12pm to 1pm (Stagecoach Inn in Vista)

Saturday, May 8th from 1:30pm to 2:30pm (Five Points in Escondido)

Saturday, May 8th from 4pm to 5pm (The Break Room)

Saturday, May 8th from 5:30pm to 6:30pm (The Library)

We are currently only half way done with our vaccines, so all guidelines of safe distancing will be expected while we are at each location.

Shoot Pool Good! Brian and Jill

Office Hours 9am-7:30pm Daily 619-303-0183

Find us on Facebook as San Diego APA 

~~~~NEW~~~~>>>> bfrankland@apaleagues.com (Brian) jfrankland@apaleagues.com (Jill) 

league.poolplayers.com Find the app on your smart phone/tablet at APA Pool Leagues (member services)

sandiego.apaleagues.com (league web site)

~~~~NEW~~~~>>>> Email score sheets to sandiego@apaleagues.com