Chasing dawn, Miller and Benoit split top prizes on JPNEWT stop at the Jersey Shore
You could see it coming. Like standing on a beach, basking in sunshine, watching storm clouds gathering on a horizon, four hours away. It’s midnight Saturday (April 27) on the Jersey shore; Sticks & Stones Billiards in Bask Township. Of the 23 entrants who signed on to the $1,000-added, Stop #2 of the 2025 J. […]
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Briana Miller
You could see it coming. Like standing on a beach, basking in sunshine, watching storm clouds gathering on a horizon, four hours away.
It’s midnight Saturday (April 27) on the Jersey shore; Sticks & Stones Billiards in Bask Township. Of the 23 entrants who signed on to the $1,000-added, Stop #2 of the 2025 J. Pechauer Northeast Women’s Tour, there were five competitors left. The top two in the current rankings (after a single stop last month), along with being the WPBA’s #15 and #16-ranked competitors, Ashley Benoit and Tour Director Briana Miller, were waiting to compete for the hot seat. Another competitor, WPBA veteran Dawn Hopkins, was waiting for an opponent in the quarterfinals. The remaining two, Judie Wilson and Mindy Maialetti (wife of event director and ‘streaming’ commentator, Frank Maialetti) are battling to see which of them it will be.
The winners’ side semifinals, which advanced Benoit and Miller to the hot seat match, had been over for two hours. The delay in getting the hot seat match underway was related to the fact that as the day-to-evening progress of the tournament advanced, the tour released some of the tables it was using to a Saturday night contingent of local players, who swarmed in to more or less take over what’s left of the available tables. The tables in use by the tour, including the main table featured on the live stream, were being occupied by loss-side matches, which had been delayed by a combination of basic slow play (not much), hard-fought battles with a lot of safety play (much more) and double-hill matches (very little; two, and two more that went almost double-hill, 7-5).
Ashley Benoit, a spirited and generally ‘upbeat’ competitor as you’re ever likely to encounter, had, like her opponent-to-be, Briana Miller, been practicing, both waiting for the hot seat match to be called. Benoit had spent some time sitting in to comment on the live stream with Frank Maialetti for a while. Stepping up to the main tour table, Benoit looked at the brackets and discovered just how far off the hot seat match, semifinal and final were likely to occur. The ‘sunshine’ of her general demeanor spotted the ‘clouds’ of a 4 a.m. tournament finish.
“Oh, no!” she said a few times, comically overplaying any sense of actual distress. “Oh no! Oh no!”
We report on ‘split the top two prizes’ decisions all the time and in many cases, people (not in the actual ‘arena’) can question the reason, wondering to themselves whether one or the other of the opponents had been intimidated by the possibility of facing the other one in a final. Or, had been called away to an emergency or pressing issue that required them to leave. Or, didn’t care or feel like it. This is generally not the case. The mind doesn’t tend to distinguish between physical exhaustion and mental exhaustion. The body does, because the physical type is something you feel in your bones, after long hours at physical labor of some sort. The latter is more subtle, though not any less and arguably more exhausting.
At midnight, the five women left in the tournament had been at the tables for 12 hours, virtually (though not exactly) non-stop. In a reverse of the ‘normal’ mind-willing, body-not-so-much phenomenon, these women didn’t need a massage (although they might not have turned one down), they needed to stop thinking for a while; about how to get a target ball into a pocket or put the cue ball in a position to frustrate the aims of an opponent, or any number of other things that one has to think about and then, determine how to respond, at or away from the table. It was, thus, no surprise that by the time Miller (in the hot seat) and Benoit (having won the semifinal) saw the tournament-time ‘writing on the wall,’ they opted out of a final match and split the top two prizes.
There were quite a few cross-generational matchups at this JPNEWT stop. Not exactly breaking news in this day and age, but compelling to watch, none the less. Both Miller and Benoit (among others) represented a (varying) current generation of players, who competed against the likes of veterans like Billie Billing, who activated and was the first President of the WPBA, and Dawn Hopkins, who’s been recording her cash-winning exploits with us here at AZBilliards since (and active before) we first appeared on the Internet scene in 1998. Hopkins appearance was something of a return to the tables, after a short hiatus (no recorded finishes with us here at AZBilliards since 2023).
Miller’s trip to the hot seat began with a 7-2 win over Erika Alban, after which she picked up Billing. That match was reflective of an apparent trend in the tournament, characterized by final scores that did not accurately reflect the back-and-forth of a tight contest. Miller had no sooner broken the first rack before they were engaged in safety battles over who would drop the 1- and 3-ball. Miller prevailed and though Billing broke rack #2 dry, she’d win the game to tie things up. Miller broke rack #3, eventually handing the table over to Billing, who’d get to the 8-ball before she scratched shooting at it. Billing broke the next rack, but when she relinquished control, Miller ran the rest of the table, only to miss the 9-ball, allowing Billing to tie the score again at 2-2. It was ‘all she wrote’ after that. In spite of repeated struggles around safety play, Miller kept gaining the upper hand and winning games until it was over 7-2. She advanced to shut out Ada Lio and draw Kaley Sullivan in one of the winners’ side semifinals.
Meanwhile, Benoit set out on her trip to the hot seat match, downing Carol Clark (in another of those cross-generational battles) 7-2, and then shut out Akiko Sugiyama (playing in her first for-cash tournament). She drew Dawn Hopkins next in one of those matches the score of which was not reflective of how tough (not to mention time-consuming) it was. Up by a single rack 3-2, Benoit chalked up two more before Hopkins responded with what proved to be her last rack. Benoit drew Mindy Maialetti in the other winners’ side semifinals.
Two shutouts put Miller and Benoit into the hot seat match; Miller over Sullivan, Benoit over Maialetti. Miller downed Benoit 7-4 to claim the seat.
Coming over to the loss side, Sullivan picked up Hopkins, who’d followed her loss to Benoit with victories over Kia Burwell (4) and Susan Kimble (3). Maialetti drew Judie Wilson, who’d lost her opener to Burwell and embarked on a four-match winning streak that had recently sent Nicole Adams (5) and Ada Lio (1) home early (sort of; Wilson/Lio didn’t finish up until after 11).
Hopkins and Sullivan battled to double hill before Hopkins prevailed, advancing to the quarterfinals. Wilson joined her after an almost-double hill battle (7-5) versus Maialetti.
It was just past 1:30 a.m. when Hopkins and Wilson squared off in the quarterfinal and almost 3 a.m. before it was done. Hopkins advanced 7-3 to what proved to be the last match of the night, the Dawn Hopkins/Ashley Benoit semifinal.
Benoit gave up just two racks to Hopkins (again, a deceptive score – 7-2 – not necessarily indicative of the battle). The decision to split the top two prizes had already been made and the night/morning was over. Benoit had won the JPNEWT season opener at Racks in Vernon, CT last month and though Miller, as occupant of the hot seat at the time of this split, was Stop #2’s official winner, the outright win for Benoit in the opener should leave her atop the tour’s leaderboard, though not by much.
In her role as tour director, Briana Miller thanked the ownership and staff at Sticks & Stones for their hospitality, along with title sponsor J. Pechauer Custom Cues, PA ProAm Pool (with Frank Maialetti for his assistance/streaming/commentating services), and Get Your Game On (JPNEWT Apparel). The next stop on the JPNEWT, scheduled for the weekend of May 17-18, will be a $1,000-added event, hosted by Winni Bar & Billiards in Laconia, NH.
