Miller, goes undefeated to hot seat, splits top prizes with Ceglarek to win ‘Vampire Night’
We reported on what was at the time, ARK Billiards’ upcoming ‘Vampire Night’ when we detailed results of a single tournament in a series of ‘Sunday Fundays’ at Classic Billiards in Laurelhill, FL last month (Sun., Jan. 19). We wondered (aloud) in the report how many ‘vampires’ the event might draw and what these deadly-allergic-to-sunlight […]
admin
Briana Miller and Bryan Ceglarek
We reported on what was at the time, ARK Billiards’ upcoming ‘Vampire Night’ when we detailed results of a single tournament in a series of ‘Sunday Fundays’ at Classic Billiards in Laurelhill, FL last month (Sun., Jan. 19). We wondered (aloud) in the report how many ‘vampires’ the event might draw and what these deadly-allergic-to-sunlight ‘vampires’ might have to do when the sun came up on Sunday morning. We now know the answers to both questions.
The invitation-only event, began unofficially, when the vampires began to gather at Classic Billiards on Saturday night, Feb. 15. The room closed its doors, with its 59 invitees inside, at 3 a.m. on Sunday morning, Feb. 16. The Vampire Night tournament got underway officially when the vampires, to include quite a few ‘vampiress’s, (and there’s a word you don’t see often) broke their first racks shortly afterwards. Apparently, when the sun rose, Classic Billiards provided just enough of a sanctuary from direct sunlight to accommodate the needs of its vampiric guests.
Like a movie, switching scenes, we’ll combine elements of detailing the event with italicized commentary from David Bartosiak, owner of Classic Billiards, who, along with Anthony “Ant” McGuire, Rick Miller and Katherine “Kat” Coyne, comprise the ‘brain trust’ behind ARK Billiards and its Sunday Fundays, Vampire Nights and a series of one past and a number of upcoming charity events, featuring the likes of Shane Van Boening, Fedor Gorst and David Alcaide, to name (we suspect) just a few.
We start with the basics. The Vampire Night which went on through that night until 2 p.m. on Sunday afternoon played out on two different table lengths; 7 ft. for the winners’ side 8-ball matches and 9 ft. for the loss side’s 9-ball matches. Vampiress Briana Miller, tour director of the J. Pechauer Northeast Women’s Tour and currently #15 on the Women’s Professional Billiards Association’s list of its top players, went undefeated to the hot seat, downing six opponents. No one chalked up a rack against her until the fourth round of play. Tony Hardin managed one in a winners’ side quarterfinal and she gave up another to Omar Nassif in their battle for the hot seat. She claimed the title with an aggregate score of 29-2. In the end, she split the top two prizes with Bryan Ceglarek, who had lost his second-round match and won nine on the loss side before agreeing to a split with Miller.
“As (mentioned in the Sunday Funday report),” said Bartosiak, “sometimes my night-time manager, Curtis Chang likes to stay behind and work on his game. He’s a great teacher and loves the game of pool, so naturally, these night-time sessions began to expand.
“One guy grew into 10 or 12 people staying at night, shooting pool and learning new skills. We jokingly referred to them as “vampire nights.’ When we started doing tournaments with ARK Billiards, one of my first thoughts was, “We gotta do a Vampire Tournament.”
And so they did. While Briana Miller was working her way through the field like the proverbial ‘knife through soft butter,’ her eventual hot-seat-match opponent, Omar Nassif, was busy working on what would become his first (known to us) payout in a pool tournament. His trip to the hot seat match was something of a ‘feast or famine’ situation (in ‘vampire’ terms, either drawing blood or giving it up). He defeated the five opponents on his way to meeting up with Miller in one of two ways, either shutting them out (Eddie Xirau in the opening round and Josh Carmusin in a winners’ side quarterfinal) or battling and eventually, defeating them double hill (Kadree Barker, and in a winners’ side semifinal, Sean Blaine).
Miller, in the meantime, in the other winners’ side semifinal, chalked up her fifth shutout, over Anthony “Ant” McGuire (the ‘A’ in ARK Billiards) and joined Nassif to battle for the hot seat. Miller gave up what proved to be her last rack in a match and claimed it.
“I knew it would be pretty popular,” said Bartosiak, “and (since) it was going to happen overnight, we (knew that it) couldn’t be open to the public. I decided to make it a private (invitation-only) event and sent out invitations.
“Not via text or email,” he added. “I figured I’d keep it ‘old school’ and printed up invitations like it was a wedding. For an added twist, I made one of those wax stamps with our logo on it and sealed everyone’s invitation by hand. It was a nice touch, we thought.
“Anthony, Rick and “Kat”came up with 90% of the invite list, and I added a handful. Originally, we were trying to keep the list for this private event to under 40, hoping only 32 would make it. Boy, were we surprised when people started coming out of the woodwork (as vampires have a way of doing when they emerge from their caskets at sundown).
Meanwhile, on the loss side, Bryan Ceglarek, like Nassif on his way to the hot seat, was doing his version of the ‘feast or famine’ routine versus his nine opponents. Against his first six, he shut out three of them (Sean Woodward, Kadree Barker and George Zamora), and battled the other three to 2-2 ties that he won with ‘beads on the wire.’ One of those was against Classic Billiards’ night manager, Curtis Chang, who’d started the whole ‘Vampire Night’ ball rolling by being a known ‘night owl.’ He awarded Ceglarek a single ‘bead’ in their race to 3, which turned into a double-hill win for Ceglarek. The other two were against Bisham Ramcharan and Vinny Ceraulo, both racing to 4. In a straight-up race to 3, Ceglarek battled the newly-arrived-to-the-loss-side “Ant” McGuire, 3-2 and advanced to the quarterfinals.
“Bryan was a huge surprise and shot absolutely out of his mind,” noted Bartosiak. “A fantastic tournament performance for him.
“The early odds-on favorites,” he added, “were Briana and Danny Ramirez (who finished in the tie for 9th), but surprisingly, like in the NFL where anything can happen on ‘Any Given Sunday,’ it was the lower-handicapped players that really came on strong.”
Joining Ceglarek in the quarterfinals was Tony Hardin, who’d followed his loss to Miller with two straight double-hill wins over Jim Manley and Ignacio Meindl before shutting out the newly arrived Sean Blaine (“who,”noted Bartosiak,”was ‘smokin hot’ until he ran out of steam, late in the morning”). Ceglarek, with the finish line now on his event horizon, shut Hardin out in those quarterfinals and then, with Omar Nassif racing to 4 in the semifinals, Ceglarek shut him out to win his last match 3-2.
Competitors were decked out in their best Vampire wear
“Gothic, organ music ‘set the stage’ early on,” said Bartosiak, “giving way to our usual ‘vibe,’ later in the morning.
“As the tournament progressed,” he added, “we used TV sets around the pool hall to play the Blade trilogy; three films in which Wesley Snipes portrays ‘Blade,’ a half-human, half-vampire hybrid who hunts vampires and eventually in the third film – Blade: Trinity (2004) – takes on the original Bad-Daddio himself, Dracula.
“Some of our competitors sported goulish, vampire-themed t-shirts, while others opted for comfort to balance out the stress of the tournament.”
Negotiations got underway for a split of the top two prizes. One can picture the squints of the vampires and the vampiresses as they stepped out into “Ew, gross! The Sun.”
David Bartosiak thanked ARK Billiards and its staff for their work with the tournament, as well as all of the two-gender vampires who signed on to compete. He, too, reportedly, slipped into the rest of his Sunday, re-setting his internal clock to something more easily manageable.
