By Percy Gouchie
January 6, 2025
Season 1 of the Sunday Super Series comes to a finish with some great pool and a lot of fun. Our first season was 8-ball with 16 players at Portland street Dooly's and another 16 at Rockingham. The league features weekly matches against one other player in a race to 11 handicapped. Our inaugural season had it's ups and downs and Jay Hanlon and I learned along the way and pledged to make some changes for season 2 to improve on the league. We appreciate the patience while we work out the kinks!
On the Portland side, the league and final double KO tournament was dominated by one man. Going undefeated in the round robin phase (week-to-week matchups) and then going undefeated in the final tournament was Nok Mantolino!! Congrats to him for playing some outstanding pool over the season! Beating the likes of Chris Penney 11-2, Colin Maloney 11-6, Jeff Saulnier 11-7, Dale Brimicombe 11-7 and myself 11-10.
After squeaking my way into the top 8 by a single win in the round robin over Wayne Rodgers, I was supposed to face multi-time provincial champ Colin Maloney in my first match of the double KO final which started this past Friday night but unfortunately Colin had to bow out due to illness and I got the bye to round 2!
In other round 1 matches... Nok beat Bafex 11-6, Chris Penney won 11-8 over Jason Ross, and Dale Brimicombe beat Christian Mantolino 11-8. Nok then dispatched of Chris Penney 11-6 in a marathon of safety battles and soft breaks to advance to the A side final while I squeaked out a win against a very tired Dale Brimicombe 11-8 to advance to my eventual butt kicking by Nok. To be fair, I did stay up late to watch the Metro 2-point tournament to level the field a bit for Dale but ya, he was more tired than me LOL. Kudos to Dale for even showing up at 10am bright eyed and bushy tailed!
Nok had a very long wait while the B side caught up to him which saw Bafex come through the b-side to beat Jason Ross, then Dale, then Christian Mantolino, and then me in what I would call the best pool I've seen Bafex play! He eventually went on to lose a nailbiter of a final against Nok 11-10. Some great pool by both men in the final! Bafex went up 10-5 at one point but ran out of gas as Nok picked away at the deficit to eventually go undefeated in the entire season! So the official top 4 went:
1st - $1300 - Nok
2nd - $1000 - Bafex
3rd - $750 - Percy
4th - $500 - Christian
The 2nd chance tournament for players finishing 9th-12th in the round robin saw Jeff Saulnier beat out Wayne Rodgers for the $200 prize in the second chance. Jeff beat Gwisani in his first match while Wayne took out Calvino Anderson in his first match to setup the final with Jeff.
Season 2 of the Sunday Super Series starts Feb. 9th and it will be 9-ball! There are still open spots at both Burnside dooly's and Portland Dooly's but they will go fast so sign up today to reserve a spot as we're only taking 16 for each location! More info on our website at www.ajcup.net/doolys-s2
Also, huge shoutout to all the players at Rockingham, hope everyone enjoyed the league! Jay will do a separate writeup for their final tourney...
Last but not least, huge thanks to both Dooly's and the staff for putting up with us... especially Jen Reid and Ashley Theriault! And to Tracey Goodyear for all her help with the league. Season 2 promises to be even better! Final thanks to Brian McNamara for streaming the final tourney for us! Stellar job as always bud!
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