Tascarella Wins First Predator Amateur Billiard Event
Predator 9-Ball Tour / West Hempstead, NY
Pete Tascarella Jr.
The Predator 9-Ball Tour held its first A-B-C-D tournament the weekend of September 27-28 at Raxx Pool Room Bar and Grill in West Hempstead, NY. Forty-seven of the region’s top amateur players came out to vie for their piece of the $1,000-added event, with Pete Tascarella Jr. coming out on top.
The event’s structure required A and B players to compete against one another on the top half of the chart, while the C and D players battled it out at the bottom, only to meet one another in the quarterfinals.
Leading the A/B players was tournament veteran Tascarella Jr.—son of famous cue maker Pete Tascarella Sr.—who had the unfortunate luck of drawing his father in the first round. After a nail-biting hill-hill match, Junior defeated his father and went on to defeat Ariel Rivera 7-4, Chris Laz 7-3, Thomas Wan 7-4, and Eric Toledo 7-6.
The bottom of the chart had its share of close calls amongst the C/D players. After narrowly defeating John MacArthur 7-6, William Finnegan went on to defeat Emily Harrison 7-2, Mike Schloven 7-1, and Marco Dy 7-2. This set up the hot seat match between Finnegan and Tascarella Jr.
Day two action on the left side saw Wan defeat Mark Pantovic 7-3 before being defeated by Toledo 7-4. Toledo met up with Marco Dy next and fought hard to best the dangerous C player 7-5 to face Finnegan in the semifinals, who lost a tough match to Tascarella for the hot seat 7-4. The underdog, Finnegan pulled out all the stops to close the door on Toledo’s tournament, defeating him 7-5 and leaving him to settle for third place. In the finals, Finnegan showed a lot of heart but simply couldn’t keep up with the more experienced Tascarella and fell short 7-3.
Results:
1st Pete Tascarella Jr.
2nd William Finnegan
3rd Eric Toledo
4th Marco Dy
5/6th Thomas Wan
5/6th Jose Soto
7/8th Mike Schloven
7/8th Mark Pantovic
9/12th Anthony Pizaro
9/12th Stew Warnock
9/12th Borana Andoni
9/12th Aron Rovner