Bonds claims his first titles at BCA 8-Ball & 9-Ball Wheelchair Championships
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9-Ball Medalists – Bret Clifton, Derrick Bonds, Bill Larson and Jeffrey Dolezal
You think pool is hard, with all that has to be learned about shot selection, approach, stance, stroke, and cue-ball control? Try doing it in a wheelchair. Everything that the standing-up, walk-around-the-table guys and gals have to learn pretty much goes out the window. Competitors in a wheelchair have to learn everything from a literal and figurative different angle.
“Like anybody else, really,” said Shane Tyree, Billiard Congress of America’s CEO, “they have to adapt.”
“Their fundamentals are different,” he added. “They have to adapt to sitting, the angle of their stick and their elbows not being as straight as they should be. They have to do what works best for them.
“Even the strategy is different. Able-bodied people will try, for example, to play for position from the center of the table, while wheelchair competitors tend to play position based on their proximity to the rails.”
This discourse regarding aspects of wheelchair competition came about as the BCA’s National Wheelchair Championships in 8-ball and 9-ball got underway (and concluded) at the Oakley Lindsay Center in Quincy, IL this past week (July 7-8 for 8-ball and July 9-10 for 9-ball). Both Championships were won by West Virginia’s Derrick Bonds, who, at 30, was competing in his first national wheelchair event, which drew 16 entrants.
Lest there be any doubt as whether ‘wheelchair’ competitors can compete on a level playing field against competitors not so confined, Bonds came to Quincy, IL having won West Virginia Moose Lodge’s 8-Ball Championships, twice (’17/’19) and claimed title to the Billiard Congress of America’s 10-Ball Ohio State Championships in 2022, both Open events. In addition to winning this past week’s 8-Ball Wheelchair event, Bonds had to contend with a competitor who’s earned ‘legend’ status as one of the better-known wheelchair competitors of all time, Harrison OH’s Charlie Hans, who’s chalked up 13 wheelchair titles, including 11 APA Wheelchair Championship titles. He is currently the two-time defending champion of that annual event.
Bonds faced Hans three times this week, once in the 9-ball competition and twice in 8-ball, the chronological first of the two wheelchair events. In that 8-ball event, they met the first time in the second round of Stage 1, double-elimination play and again in the finals of the three-match Stage 2.
Bonds won all three of the matches he needed to win for qualification to Stage 2. After opening against Emede Reyes, Bonds ran right into Hans, who’d opened with a double-hill win over Bill Larson, before Bonds shut him out, as well. The third shutout over Jeffrey Dolezal put Bonds into the four-player Stage 2. Hans, in the meantime, moved to the loss side of the double-elimination Stage 1 bracket and started his trek to the finals by shutting out Brenda Caves. He gave up two racks in his next match against Charles Interrante and then shut out Dan Hall to qualify for the Stage 2 proceedings.
In the opening-round of the single-elimination Stage 2, Bonds, who’d qualified from the winners’ side of Stage 1, met Bret Clifton, who’d qualified from the loss side. Similarly, Hans, who’d qualified from the loss side, picked up the other Stage 1 competitor who’d qualified from the winners’ side, Keith Hill.
Bonds defeated Clifton 5-2, while Hans eliminated Hill 5-3. Bonds, though he’d fall behind initially (1-3) in the final, came back to win five straight and claim his first National wheelchair title with a 6-3 victory over Hans.
Bonds and Hans meet up a ‘memorable’ once in 9-ball championships
Twenty hours after winning his first national wheelchair title by defeating Hans in the 8-ball final, Bonds greeted him a third time, in the opening round of the 9-Ball Championships. They came within a match of facing each other a fourth time, which would have occurred in the opening round of the 8-ball event’s Stage 2.
Presumably ‘on to each other’ when they shook hands and came out shooting 9-ball, Bonds and Hans battled back and forth to double hill, before Bonds prevailed. This time, though, Bonds advanced to pick up the competitor he’d faced in the opening round of the 8-ball event’s Stage 2, Bret Clifton. Clifton and Bonds played double-hill ball until Clifton prevailed, sending Bonds over for what might have been a rematch versus Hans on the loss side. Clifton and Jeffrey Dolezal advanced to Stage 2 from the winners’ side.
On the loss-side bracket of 9-ball’s Stage 1, Bonds won three to qualify for Stage 2, downing Dan Hall 6-2, Mark Jones 6-1 and then surviving another double-hill battle, this time against Christopher Parnell. Hans opened up his loss-side campaign by shutting out Emede Reyes and eliminating Charles Interrante 6-3. In the final qualifying round, Hans faced Bill Larson, who defeated him 6-1, ending any anticipation for a Bonds/Hans rematch in one of the Stage 2 semifinals.
Bonds downed the winners’ side-qualified competitor Dolezal 7-1, as Clifton was busy eliminating Larson 7-2. As he’d done in the semifinals of the 8-ball competition against him, Bonds claimed his second national wheelchair title with a 7-3 victory over Clifton.
“At some point, you just have to free stroke,” Bonds told Shane Hulsey, sports reporter for the Muddy River News in Quincy, IL in a Wednesday report. “You just have to go for it, and it either works or it doesn’t. It happened to work in my favor. I just kind of switched the momentum and held onto it as long as I could, and it worked out.”
Bond, according to Hulsey, had adopted that free-and-easy attitude from the beginning, when, at the age of 18, after an accident at a Motocross event had put him in a wheelchair, his Dad signed him up to play in a local pool tournament, at which he finished as runner-up. Six years later, he would begin the competitive play that would eventually bring him to this past weekend’s event.
“With big events like this,” Bonds told Hulsey, “I try really hard not to have expectations. I come in, play my game and hope good things happen.”
Good pool advice, in or out of a wheelchair, and it earned him a national title.
“It’s pretty sweet,” Bonds said. “I’m going to try to be back next year.”
