The gen­er­al con­sen­sus in any sport is, ‘With­out the in­jec­tion of youth, the sport will even­tu­al­ly fade away’. Well, the Bil­liards (Pool) com­mu­ni­ty got a snap­shot in­to the fu­ture of their sport last Wednes­day night at Mr Bil­liards Sig­na­ture Pool Hall in Champs Fleurs, where sev­er­al en­ti­ties came to­geth­er to show­case the game amongst the youth.

In­vic­tus, one of the new­er teams in the land­scape of cue sports in Trinidad & To­ba­go, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Crazy 8’s, Sikar­i­oz Bil­liards Club, Trinidad Tac­ti­cal Se­cu­ri­ty Force and ‘Sig­na­ture’ venue man­age­ment, host­ed the first of its kind, Un­der-15 In­ter­na­tion­al 8 Ball tour­na­ment.

The event fea­tured four of the most promis­ing youth play­ers in the coun­try, Yusef Tro­ja 10, Jayson Ce­de­no 12, along with broth­ers An­drew 8 and Aidan Ram­rat­tan 11. The quar­tet of young cueists thrilled the huge au­di­ence with their shot-mak­ing abil­i­ty and ba­sic un­der­stand­ing of the game as they fought tooth and nail to emerge on top.

In the end, it was Aidan Ram­rat­tan who came out on top, de­feat­ing his younger broth­er An­drew in the fi­nal and Jayson Ce­de­no fin­ished in third place af­ter turn­ing the ta­bles on Yusef Tro­ja.

The night start­ed with all four play­ers bat­tling in a round robin for­mat, where each win would earn one point. Yusef and Aidan won their open­ing games 2-nil against Jayson and An­drew, re­spec­tive­ly. In round 2, An­drew bounced back with a 2-nil win over Yusef and Jayson and Aidan drew their match at 1-1. The com­pe­ti­tion be­came much keen­er in the third round, with Jayson and An­drew draw­ing 1-1 and Yusef and Aidan al­so pro­duc­ing a 1-1 draw.

At the end of the round robin stage, Aidan topped the stand­ings with four points, Yusef and An­drew end­ed with three points each, which meant a one-frame tiebreak­er was need­ed to sep­a­rate the two and Jayson had two points. An­drew pre­vailed in the tiebreak­er to book a meet­ing with broth­er Aidan in the fi­nals, while Yusef and Jayson would meet in a re­match of their open­er for third and fourth. Both match­es were Races to 3.

In the third-place play­off, Yusef and Jayson split the first two frames with Jayson com­ing from be­hind to tie things up at 1-1. Yusef again went to the front and for the sec­ond time, Jayson had to work his way back to even things at two each. In the de­cid­ing frame, Yusef got to the eight ball first but end­ed up out of po­si­tion. He at­tempt­ed a kick shot but missed the ob­ject ball com­plete­ly, gift­ing Jayson a ball-in-hand. With four balls on the ta­ble, Jayson took his time, mapped out his plan and one by one he knocked them down. His shot to get on­to the eight was a long cut shot down the rail to get per­fect po­si­tion on the black. Three–Two to Jayson and third place in the bag.

In the fi­nal, An­drew won the lag and broke off in the cham­pi­onship match. Aidan stole the first frame af­ter An­drew missed the eight ball in the side pock­et, leav­ing Aidan with a mid­dle-dis­tance shot in­to the cor­ner. He made no mis­take. Aidan went fur­ther ahead when his lit­tle broth­er called a bank shot in­to the side pock­et but the black end­ed up go­ing in­to the op­po­site pock­et. An­drew pulled a game back with two well-played shots from dis­tance to make it one frame to two.

An­drew did have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to even things up at two apiece with a four-ball run to get al­most per­fect po­si­tion on the black, but missed. That left Aidan with just the sev­en ball to sink. They both missed a cou­ple of at­tempts but an ex­quis­ite cut shot on the sev­en-ball in­to the cor­ner pock­et re­sult­ed in per­fect po­si­tion on the eight and Aidan fin­ished in style to win 3-1 and with it, the in­au­gur­al un­der-15 cham­pi­onship.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to the play­ers and the or­gan­is­ers for giv­ing the young play­ers a plat­form and for high­light­ing such a high lev­el of play.