Benoit goes undefeated to claim second 2025 ‘unsplit’ JPNEWT title
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Julia Bright, Ada Lio, Ashley Benoit and Kaley Sullivan
Battles Ada Lio twice to complete six-match run to the finish line
In their six meetups in the finals of stops on the J. Pechauer Northeast Women’s Tour (JPNEWT) since March of 2024, Briana Miller and Ashley Benoit have split the top two prizes four times. Benoit won the last final match of the 2024 season between them and the first one of this year. This past weekend (June 28-29), in the absence of Miller, Benoit went undefeated to claim her second title of this year’s four stops, thus far. In addition to Benoit sliding into the top spot in the tour standings ahead of Miller, Ada Lio, who finished as runner-up and Kaley Sullivan, who finished third, jumped up in the rankings list to take third and fourth place, respectively. The $1,000-added event drew 38 entrants to Snooker’s in Providence, RI.
For entertainment purposes only, we did a little figuring on how certain assumptions about players that were favored in this tournament worked out in the tournament results. Using FargoRates and recent events on the JPNEWT as a measuring tool in an imaginary tote board of odds at the start of the tournament, Benoit would have been the favorite with 3-2 odds. Lio would have started with the second-highest odds of 3-1. Bright would have had 4-1 odds while Sullivan began with 7-1 odds. Sullivan’s finish in third place would have made a trifecta bet (picking the top three, in order) a good investment, netting $96. With Bright in the mix as the third pick, the same bet would have netted $60.
Benoit almost had her run to the win sidetracked twice. She was forced to fight off a double-hill challenge from Katie Bischoff in her opening round. She advanced to chalk up two straight 7-2 wins over Carla Borja Montanez and Amanda Laverriere and picked up Jane Im in one of the winners’ side semifinals.
Lio, in the meantime, was looking pretty good in the early going, though the racks-against started piling up as she advanced. She opened with a shutout over Karissa Jackson, followed with a 7-2 win over Rebecca Hilton and downed Erica Testa 7-4 to draw Kaley Sullivan in the other winners’ side semifinal.
Im put up a double-hill fight (Benoit’s second), but Benoit eventually sent her packing to the loss side. Lio joined Benoit in the hot seat match after sending Sullivan west 7-1. Benoit claimed the seat 7-2 over Lio.
On the loss side, Im picked up Julia Bright, who’d lost her opening match to Bischoff 1-7, before getting to work on a six-match, loss-side winning streak, which started with a shutout against Tera Williams, and advanced through three straight 7-3 wins (Karissa Jackson, Bonnie Saritelli, and Jennifer Clement). She returned ‘pedal to the metal’ again, allowing Leann Dettore only a single rack in their match, just ahead of saying ‘hello’ to Jane Im. Sullivan drew Liz Taylor, who’d lost a winners’ side quarterfinal to Im, then defeated Bischoff in a double-hill battle and Laverriere 7-3.
Sullivan advanced to the quarterfinals, 7-5 over Taylor. Bright extended her loss-side streak to seven, giving up just a single rack to Im and joining Sullivan in those quarterfinals. Sullivan ended Bright’s streak 7-4.
FargoRate calculations gave Sullivan only a 30.1% chance of winning her race to 7 against Lio and she got as close as she could get to beating those odds without defying them completely. She lost the semifinal, double hill, that sent Lio to the final versus Benoit.
FargoRate calculations on odds-to-win were even longer for Lio versus Benoit in the final than they were for Sullivan against Lio in the semifinal. They suggested, by inference with the numbers, that if Lio were to play 100 matches against Benoit, Lio would normally win just a fraction lower than 12 of the matches. Lio chalked up one more rack against her than she had in the hot seat match, but Benoit completed her undefeated run with a 7-3 win in the final.
This event was a ‘qualifier,’ with the winner receiving an invitation to the WPBA’s Felt Colorado Classic in August. Since the winner and runner-up have already received invitations to the event, Kaley Sullivan picked up the invitation.
Tour director Briana Miller, in absentia, thanked the ownership and staff at Snooker’s for their hospitality, along with title sponsor J. Pechauer Custom Cues, Billiard Sports Network, and Get Your Game On (JPNEWT apparel). The JPNEWT is headed into something of a summer hiatus (though not the players, necessarily). The next scheduled stop on the tour (#5) is scheduled for the weekend of Sept. 13-14; a $1,000-added event, hosted by Shooters Family Billiards in Wayne, NJ.
