Mary Kenniston - Part 5 (Action, Tournaments, and the Road to Three WPBA Wins)

In Part 5 of the Legends of the Cue conversation with WPBA Hall of Famer Mary Kenniston, the road stories, rivalries, and tournament triumphs keep coming.

Mary takes listeners back to the mid-1980s pool scene in Los Angeles, where action, personalities, and opportunity collided in smoky poolrooms and late-night gambling sessions. From becoming the house pro at a bustling barroom to matching up with future stars like Kelly Simpson (later Kelly Oyama), Mary recounts the hustling culture that helped sharpen her competitive edge.

The conversation moves through legendary rooms like Hollywood Billiards, where Mary found pristine tables, tough weekly tournaments, and a chance to test herself against top male players—sometimes beating them along the way. These were the years when Mary balanced road action with tournament play, building a reputation as one of the most formidable women in the game.

A highlight of the episode is Mary’s unforgettable story from the 1984 McDermott Masters, featuring a dramatic hill-hill match against Lori Shampo that ended with one of the most hilarious and memorable moments ever witnessed in a pool tournament.

Along the way, Mary reflects on the rise of the women’s professional game, the dominance of Jean Balukas, and the competitive environment that pushed everyone to improve. She also shares her perspective on the era when women’s pool was striving for mainstream recognition—and the pivotal players who helped elevate the sport.

By 1987, all of Mary’s experience—action games, road matches, and relentless competition—came together as she captured three WPBA tournament victories in a single season, firmly establishing herself among the elite players of her generation.

It’s another entertaining and revealing chapter in the remarkable life story of one of pool’s true pioneers.

In this episode, Mary Kenniston proves once again that in the golden era of pool, every match came with a story.

Transcript

Mike Gonzalez 0:15

Let's fast forward if we can just a little bit to 1987. I look at this list of champions, WPBA champions in 1987, and this name starts popping up in a couple places. The Robbs Roost In Mary Arino.

Mary Kenniston 0:31

Yeah, that was my married name.

Mike Gonzalez 0:32

WPBA National, what probably would have been Nine Ball Championship, Mary Garino.

Mary Kenniston 0:39

Yeah, well, I didn't be, I wasn't a Gorino until '93.

Mike Gonzalez 0:44

Okay. That's that's what puts you down for. So we'll put you down for whatever you want to be.

Mary Kenniston 0:49

Yeah, Keniston. I should never have changed my name, let's put it that way. Yeah, I remember. I said that's the only way you can ever get his name in the billiard magazines. I moved back to LA after I left the Bay Area. And by this time, the stagger in had expanded. And now they had, you know, maybe 10, 12 bar tables. It was quite quite big. And Ray, the man that owned the place, he was excited to see me. And he had a pool league and the bar. And so I started giving lessons to some of his pooling people. And then I was uh, but I was never there. You know, I would just stop in so once in a while. And so one night when I stopped in, he said, How come you don't hang around here? He says, I want you to hang around here. I says, Well, you don't have a big table. I says, you know, I really prefer big tables. He says, Well, find me one. He says, if you find me a big table, I'll make you my house pro. I says, Okay. So I ended up calling Lou Buterra. He worked for Golden West out in the valley, and told him I needed a table. He said, I got just the one for you. And it wasn't a gold crown, but it was the one right underneath it. Ray gave me a blank check and I went out there, looked at it, and he hadn't even disassembled it yet. Oh, no, we had just put it together, that's what it was. And so now we had to disassemble it and take it out to Belfire, but he didn't care. So now I put the word out because, you know, a lot of the players weren't coming there because we didn't have a big table, you know, for them to gamble on, you know, to play one pocket or whatever. So I put the word out that we had, you know, a big table. So now Ray would stake me to play people, whether on the bar tables or the big tables, and I'd get to keep all the money, so that was good. And so I ended up staying there most of the time. And so now one night, this I'm sitting at the bar talking to Ray, and this girl walks up, this little tiny girl walks up straight up to me, and she says, Is your name Mary? I said, Yeah. She says, I want to play some. I said, Okay. And so I pointed at the big table. I says, play there? She says, Yeah, that's fine. So we ended up playing races to seven for a hundred bucks. Well, anyway, so it turned out her name was Kelly. And so she played, you know, well, she lost, she had a steakhorse with us, so she lost three or four sets. She says, I'll be back tomorrow night. I said, Okay. And so she came back the next night with a different steak horse. So I want another three or four hundred dollars, never asked for weight. And anyway, third night she comes back, same thing. She lost three or four hundred with the steak horse. Next night she comes in, no steakhorse. Now, over the by this time, you know, we'd gotten to be like half-ass friendly, you know, because uh Kelly was a little bit of a smart ass, and I I've been known to, you know, be able to talk some smack myself. And but it was good natured, you know. And we got to be kind of friendly. And so anyway, she lost her banker all that fourth night. And she says, Well, the hell with this. She says, I got a bunch of spots. You want to go with me tomorrow night? Tomorrow night was Friday. Uh, she says, I'll take you around, we'll make some money. I says, sure. Her name was Kelly Simpson at that time. Later on, she got married and she became Kelly Oyama. So we were like Mutt and Jeff running all over LA together. And so then it boiled down to where we'd meet on Tuesday night and just she and I would play, and we'd play $25 sets, races to seven, and she'd lose 200. And uh, but we'd always go to eat first, and I'd make her, I'd make her pay for it. I told I'm not going out to eat. She wanted to try all these real night restaurants. I said, I can't afford that. She don't worry about it, I'll pay for it. I said, okay, so we tried all the real good restaurants in LA. And uh so one night she comes in and she says, she told me that she'd she mentioned this boyfriend that she had, and he had money, you know. Well, it turned out the guy was a plumbing contractor for developments that they were building. So in other words, he wasn't just a regular plumber, he was the, you know, the guy that sat behind the desk and, you know, signed the contracts and send his plumbers out to do all the houses. So he had plenty of money. Also married. And I told her, why are you fooling around with him? He's married. She said, I don't care, he's got money. I said, okay. We're meeting at Hollywood Billiards. Now, by this time, I had met Lou the houseman, and he told me he was he was the houseman at Six and Western in LA, and told me to come down and he had some people I could play. And so that's where I started going, but the equipment was just horrible. And I really I didn't like going there. And he'd say, How come you're not coming by? And so I didn't want to tell him his equipment stunk, you know. And uh I'd go down like once a week, and uh by this time I knew some of the guys, and so I said, you know, there are any other pool rooms around here that have good tables? And they said, Yeah, Hollywood billiards tables are perfect, but the guys are real, he's a real beauty. I says, Well, I don't care. And so now Allison, you probably know this and Mark, you know, as a professional courtesy, you know, if you're a player, you don't pay time unless you're gambling. And so one of them says, Well, Arnie's not going to give you free time. He doesn't give anybody free time. And I says, Well, that's all right. I said, Okay, I'm gonna go down there anyway. Hollywood Billiards was on the corner of Hollywood and Western, and you went down the stairs. It was downstairs in the basement, and when you got down to the bottom of the stairs, there was, I don't know, eight, six, eight, ten, five by ten billiard tables, three cushioned billiards, immaculate, perfect condition. On the other side, there was eight or ten gold crowns, perfect condition. And place was a dump, but the tables were perfect, you know, or at least looked perfect. So anyway, place was pretty much empty because I went down in the afternoon and hit some balls for a while, and I gotta tell you, it was the best table I played on since I'd been back to LA. And uh, so I brought the balls up. And so the owner had been watching me, and he said, uh you play pretty good for a girl. Yeah, that's what they all used to say, right? Yeah, yeah. We cured him of that, didn't we? Yeah. He said, You play pretty good for a girl. I says, yeah, I says, I I play okay. He says, How come I haven't seen you around? He says, Are you new to the area? I says, No, I says, I've been here around for a while. I says, uh, he said, Well, where do you normally play? So I said, I says, House of Billiards. He's all they got terrible tables. He says, Why do you go there? I says, Well, they give me free time. He says, Well, I'll give you free time if you come here. I said, Well, okay, thank you. I couldn't wait to get back to the pool room and tell them that Arnie gave me free time, and they told me I was the only probably the only living human that ever got free time out of Arnie. It turned out that Arnie Satin used to run tournaments with Freddie Whalen, who was a mobster back in the 60s and early 70s, and all the you know, the real good players would come through and play at them, Marie Martin and Larry Lascotti and Miserak and Eddie Kelly and all those guys, but of course they played straight pole. But nobody liked Arnie. He was such but I ended up getting free time. Robin and I were the two best girl players down in LA at that time. And every tournament we played, we'd one of us would win, the other one would be second. Anytime they'd have a women's tournament. So we both wanted more women's tournaments, you know. And so I told her, I says, well, they're I said, why don't you see if you can get some pool rooms in Orange County to run around Robin tournament on Sundays for women, get them to add, you know, a couple of hundred. I says, and I'll do the same thing on my end. Put together like an eight-tournament, eight-room tour. And uh, and so every Sunday we were going somewhere, and Robin and I got to split the money, you know, it was a little round robin tournament. And the top, we broke the players down into four brackets and the top two. And at that time, there weren't that many girls, so we'd get 16 girls. And so we'd make it so the top two from each bracket would get into the finals. So at least, you know, they'd feel like, you know, they'd they'd win a little something, you know, to keep them coming. But Robert and I got most of the money. So that worked out all right. But so Arnie couldn't stand having to come up with a couple of hundred every other month, right? Because he was so tight. So he says, Well, I'll do that. He says, but you've got to, he said, I've been thinking for a while, I want to have a $10 tournament here once a week. In those days, you know, that was a pretty good deal, a $10 tournament. He says, uh, I said, Well, what night do you want to do it? He says, Tuesday, that's my slowest night. I said, Okay. So I put the word out. Well, anyway, within a month or so, we'd fill the field. And we had 32 was the most we could do in one night, because it was longer races. And I was the only girl that played in it. But, you know, Keith would come and Dickie, and you know, all the real good players, you know, from LA. And I'd play in it every week, and one time I won it. And I beat Dickie in the hot seat. Dickie was, you know, he was playing really good, you know, not as good as Keith, but you know, he played really good. He was just steaming. And he said, Oh, I'll beat you in the finals. I says, Yeah, okay. And so anyway, I dusted him off in the finals too. And uh, so anyway, Keith told me later, he says, Dickie pitched and moaned all the way home, whining. He says, And of course, I stuck it in. Man, she played good though, didn't she, Dickie?

Allison Fisher 11:52

That's funny.

Mary Kenniston 11:53

But you know, I was proud of that because that was a tough tournament. I mean, everybody ran out in that tournament. By this time, I had also met a guy named Fred Garino, Freddie Garino, and we ended up being becoming a couple.

Mike Gonzalez 12:08

So what what year are we in now?

Mary Kenniston 12:10

We're in like 84, 85. Okay.

Mike Gonzalez 12:14

So you were a Guerino when you won three tournaments in 1987.

Mary Kenniston 12:18

No, I was not. We didn't get married until 93.

Mike Gonzalez 12:21

Well, see, somebody thought you were married, I guess.

Mary Kenniston 12:25

I it's just a misprint because I only won a couple of tournaments under Gorino.

Mike Gonzalez 12:31

Gotcha.

Mary Kenniston 12:32

By this time, I was getting tired of LA. And Freddie was a bookie. He had a regular job where he ran the, he went and got an AA degree at one of the local community colleges in computer science. This is when computers were first coming out. And so a small aerospace company hired him, and they had three companies, and so he was running the computers, and they were paying him like $80 an hour to run the computers for him. So, I mean, you know, $80 an hour in 1985, that was good money, you know. But he hated it. You know, he wanted to be a poor room guy, and he was he worked for a bookie, and then he had his own action book. So after the Super Bowl, every year we would go to Vegas. The guy that he worked for was an old-time mobster, and so his name was also Freddie. We called him the old man. The old man would call me up and say, Okay, Freddie says you're going to Vegas. Where do you want to stay this time? And so I'd pick a different hotel. And it would be room, food, and beverage. Everything was free, you know, except for the gambling. And we'd always get a suite, you know. So we stayed at all the best hotels. And if I wanted to go to a show, you know, I would just call the old man and he'd arrange for tickets. And uh, so those were good years. Well, anyway, I loved Vegas. You know, LA rolled up around nine o'clock, and you know, Vegas, you know, I've always been a night person. Vegas never closed. So I was wanting to move to Vegas. So finally, and Freddie, Freddie didn't want to leave LA because you know, he'd he'd he was from back east too. He was from Connecticut, right across the Long Island Sound from where I grew up. So culturally, we were very similar. And and then he was Italian. I'm half Italian, or my mother was half Italian, but we grew up culturally, culturally Italian, and uh so we had a lot in common. He didn't want to leave because you know he had a sports book, and he had come to LA right after the air, he got out of the Air Force, and so that was his home. He really didn't he loved Vegas, but I says, Well, I'm moving to Vegas whether you're coming or not. He says, All right, I'll come, I'll come. He says, but uh, he says, You're gonna have to get a job, you know, if we move there. I says, Yeah, okay. So he didn't expect me to do that. He said, Well, I'm also, you know, he says, I'm gonna come back in August, you know, and and yeah, I'm I'm only gonna be there a couple days a week, but I'm gonna be running back and forth. Might even stay in LA during football season, you know. I says, Yeah, okay, that's fine. I really didn't care whether you came or not.

Mike Gonzalez 15:21

And uh pretty tight, huh?

Mary Kenniston 15:26

Well, like I said, I mean, it just, you know, he says, you gotta wait until after the Super Bowl is over. He says, and then we'll go to Vegas like usual, and and uh we'll find a place to live. I said, All right. So we go up to Vegas and we found a place to live. And over the time that we had gone up there, he had introduced me to uh his friend that he'd grown up with back east, and his name was Gabe Girardi, and his pool nickname was the mailman. Gabe was a poker dealer at the Stardust. So when we went back to Vegas after after the football season was over, before we moved there, I told I told Gabe, I says, I want to learn how to deal poker. Each day he would show me something, and I would practice in front of the mirror until I looked like the other dealers. So he came home from work one day, and I says, After about a month and a half, and you know, I mean, I'm practicing my fingers are raw, I'm practicing so hard, you know. And so he was amazed. He says, All right. So he comes home the next night with a couple guys from the pool room. We pull the table out from the wall, put the mirror back, and the guys sit down. And Gabe had brought a bunch of chips with him. And I said, Okay, he says, now we're gonna let you deal, you know, to real people. Dealing to real people was a lot different than uh dealing, you know, especially because I was nervous. And you're about as good as you're gonna get without dealing in a real game. So I he said, uh, I said, where should I go? He says, well, he said, uh, let me I'll I'll let you know. So by this time I had been going down to the pool room, and there was this one guy that I had beaten several times. His name was Kenny Lambert. And I didn't know what he did, but he was an older man. Well, anyway, so I walk into the pool room one day and I see Gabe talking to Kenny. And Kenny is shaking his head. Uh-uh, uh-uh, right? So then Gabe sees me and he waves me over. He says, Mary, come here. He said, uh, he says, Kenny, you this is Mary. He says, Yeah, I know Mary. And uh he says, Well, you know, can you give her a job? And he says, I'm not giving her a job. Gabe says, Come on, do me a solid. Give her at least an audition. And Kenny just looks at me, snaps at me. He says, All right, he says, Graveyard, 2 a.m., be there, black and whites. And he turns on his heel and walks away. I said, I said, and he didn't, I said, the Gabe, I said he even tell me where he works. He said, Oh, Vegas World. He says, just show up. Well, Vegas World was one of the dumps on the strip, but I didn't care. At least I was getting an audition, right? The first night I went in there, it was a mess. You know, the the the how the the shift boss would put me in, you know, a little bit here and there, and I was just screwed up constantly. And so he didn't seem real happy with me. And I went home that night and thinking, oh man. But I went back the next night, so he looks at me, rolls his eyes, and but he had orders, you know. So he put me in a little less than he did the night before, and I did a little better, but I was still screwing up. So the third night I go in, there's a different guy there. So I went up and I introduced myself to him. And uh he says, Well, my name is Mike, and I'm the new shift boss. He says, Are you are you new? And I said, Yeah. He says, Give me a month, I'll turn you into the best dealer in Vegas. So Mike would stand at the table, and if I'd make a mistake, he'd he'd correct it, but write it down, little notebook. And then on my breaks, he'd say, Okay, remember when this happened, blah, blah, blah. He says, and anyway, so now after a month, he says, Okay, he says, uh, you're about as good as you're gonna get. He says, now you're gonna work on speak. He said, by this time I had, I now I'm dealing without making any mistakes. He says, average dealers, he says, you know, the real bad ones, he says, you know, it takes them like a minute between hands, you know, by the time they, you know, they push the pot and shuffle the cards. These are the days before they had the automatic shufflers. And then get the hand out for the next hand. He said, it takes them about a minute. He says, and then the ones that are, you know, uh the average ones get it out in about 40 seconds. The real good ones get it out in 25. 20 to 25. So anyway, he said, I'm gonna sit here with a stand with a stopwatch in my pocket and time you while you're dealing. Well, anyway, so now I'm trying to go as fast as I can and I'm screwing up. And he just looked at me and he just, you know. So I slowed down a little bit and you know, I got into my rhythm, and so now it's my break. And he he takes me away from the tables and he says, he says, well, he says, I lied when I said that the real good dealers, you know, deal between 20 and 25. He says, the real good dealers take them about 30 seconds. You're averaging 27. She says, I can't believe it. In 1984 is when Kelly told me that she wanted to go to the tournaments. And I told her that, you know, they're all back east, and you know, they don't pay anything, and yeah, I can't afford it. So the next night she calls me and she says, Dave, that was his name. She says, Dave says he'll pay me too, pay for you too, because he doesn't want me to go by myself. I says, What do you mean? He says, he's gonna pay for both of us to go.

Mike Gonzalez 21:29

This is Dave the Plumber.

Mary Kenniston 21:30

Dave the plumbing contractor, yeah. And uh I said, I said, are you sure? He says, I'm sure. She says, I said, Well, I don't believe it. She says, I'm telling you. I says, Well, tell them, yeah, okay. I mean, yeah, that's an offer I can't refuse, you know. So the first tournament that we went to was the McDermott Masters, 1984. And for her, it was her first big tournament, so she really didn't know anything. Everybody except me. I knew everybody. And so it was like old home week for me. And so I'm doing real well in the tournament. Gets down. I think there's like four of us left. And my next match was against Lori Champeau. Now I had heard of Lori. She came, she was on the road when I was in California. She was like right behind me. So I had heard of her. And I heard she played real well. But I'd never seen her play. Now tournament's in Milwaukee. And so, you know, Detroit's pretty, she's from Detroit, and Detroit's pretty close to Milwaukee. So a lot of her home home crowd was there. Plus the people that knew her from the road. And a lot of the people that knew me were there also. So there were, I don't know, a couple of game matches gonna start at that round because the men it was the men's men were there too. And but all the all the bets were on our table. Because, you know, this is against the two, you know, supposedly the two best girl action players in the country. In those days we raced to seven. So she got to the hill first. She had me six to five. It was one, one, two, two, three, three. So anyway, she gets to the hill first, six-five, and I win the game. Now it's six six, and I break the balls, and the one is heading towards the corner pocket, and it gets stopped by by ball going to the pocket, but it's hanging there. And I've got a really easy billiard, carum, on the one to the nine. So my people are celebrating, right? I mean, the whole room, you know, the room is shaking with, you know, people pounding and clapping their hands and this and that. And, you know, her side is, you know, groaning and moaning. So anyway, I waited for the noise to die down, and I bent over to shoot the ball, and Lori hollers, I want somebody to watch the hit. Let's get somebody to watch the hit. I turned around and I looked at Lori. I mean, it was like a hanger. And she's she's smiling, her people are hollering, yeah, yeah, let's get somebody to watch the hit. And I thought, oh, right. You probably remember Red Jones, Mark, don't you?

Mike Gonzalez 24:27

Absolutely.

Mary Kenniston 24:28

Okay, well, by this time, Red Jones, he's an old man. But in his day, you know, he was one of the, you know, he was probably just under the Willie Muscone's and Irving Cranes of the day. And so anyway, he was the tournament director. And they had a Dais, a raised dais. And so he comes, he says, Oh, watch the hit. And he's got Coke bottle glasses, and he's got a cane, and you know, they got a help, he's daugtering down the steps, and I'm thinking to myself, oh Jesus. And Laurie's side is howling, and Laurie's laughing, and you know, my side is just furious. So I'm just standing there waiting a month for him to get to the table. And and uh, you know, just furious, right? So he comes over to the table and I and I explained to him, you know, what the shot is, and he says, Oh, okay. And he and he just reaches down into the ball box and pulls out a ball and goes to hold the ball over the shot to see how it has to be hit. And I looked at him, I said, What are you doing? And he drops the ball on and and the ball and it hits it, and the balls go, and her side, now Red and I are like trying to catch the balls and you know, and put them back to where they were. Her side is screaming, they chanting, re-rack, re-rack, you know, they want us to play another game. I don't want that. My side's hollering anyway. So Red Red decided, no re-rack. But now when he the way he had set the balls up, it wasn't a hanger anymore, right? You know, and I'm I am pissed. So I look and I finally decided that I didn't want to. The shot was very makeable, but it was hard. You know, it wasn't a hanger like it was before, and I didn't want to take the chance. So I studied the shot and I finally I hooked her. I played a shot. I played a hook where she had to kick three rails and she couldn't make the nine. She got up and she shot the kick and she missed it by a hair. I picked up by a ball in hand, and I just now have a ball in hand, it's very easy. You know, but where cue ball was before was tough. So I tap the ball in and I turn around and I walk back to shake Laurie's hand, and I have my hand out, and she pulls me towards her. She doesn't let go of my hand, she pulls me towards her and down. She's still sitting in the chair, and she pulls me down to my till my head is like even with hers. And she says, When Red dropped that ball on your dead nuts combo, I peed my pants. And I and I looked down, she was wearing khaki pants, and by this time the pee had spread all the way down to her knees, right? So now we're both laughing, and so then I remembered I said, Oh, I got a jacket hanging on the bottom, back of my chair. That's brilliant. So I got the jacket for her, and she put it around her waist, and we walked out, walked out arm in arm out of the tournament room, and that's how we became friends. Well, a great story. Oh, when he dropped that ball. So anyway, every time I saw Red after that, because he was, you know, around at a lot of the tournaments, right? And every time I'd see him, I'd go like this.

Allison Fisher 28:04

Yeah.

Mary Kenniston 28:07

Yeah. Anyway, he'd try to apologize. I'm so sorry. I was like, anyway.

Mike Gonzalez 28:14

Well, I I have to say, Mary, you're you're the first guest we've had that has been prompted by a couple. And by the way, I missed one because there were three wins on tour, including a couple back-to-back in 1987. And you didn't blink, you just went right on to the next tour. You didn't even want to talk about your wins. So we got to have you talk about those three wins in in 1987 on the ladies' tour, because you know, other than Jean Belukis and Laurie John winning a couple.

Mary Kenniston 28:39

Lori John wasn't a player at that time. She was not a factor. She in 87. She she was just coming into her own. She had met she had met Sammy at that McDermott Masters in 1984. I was horrified because I knew, I knew, first of all, Lori John was 18 by this time. In fact, we roomed together at the McDermott Masters. Because Kelly didn't want a room with me. She wanted to, she wanted a room by herself for whatever reasons. So I roomed with Lori John like I used to when I used when we used to, because I used to take her with me to tournaments when she was little. So anyway, so I came back to the room one day, and the room was filled with roses. I mean, it was just awful. I couldn't breathe. There were so many roses in the room. And uh, who was sending her roses? Because all Lori John had talked about was this Joe, because she was in college, and my boyfriend Joe this and my boyfriend Joe that, right? And so now I walk in the room and there's all these flowers. So anyway, she comes back to the room. I said, Who are these flowers from, Lori John? Because I knew Joe was broke. He wasn't sending her flowers. And uh she's she says, Oh, she says, that must be Sammy. They're from Sammy. I said, Sammy who? She says, Sammy Jones. I said, Sammy Jones. Now, I knew Sammy Jones from Texas. He lived in San Antonio. Every time I saw Sammy Jones, he had a girl on each arm, you know, uh dressed to the nines. He uh, anyway, he was not, he was not the person We've opened up Pandora. He was not the person that I wanted Lori John to be involved with. She was 18, she looked like she was 12. I mean, if you you look at pictures of her from when she was 18, I've got some. She looks like she's 12. Yeah and look, Sammy, I think he was like 35 at that time. You know, he was he was 16, 17 years older than her. I was just furious. I said, You can't, no, he's so nice, and he took me for lobster, and you know, right? Well, I went up to Sammy and I said, Listen, you need to stay away from her. I said, You move in different circles. Then she just, oh, I love her so much, and you know, I'm gonna marry her. And I thought, my God, what the fuck? They ended up getting married, and anyway, long story short, they ended up having a few kids, and uh but Sammy taught her how to play, and she was just starting to come into her own way. She beat Gene, she shouldn't have beat Gene, but Jean got unlucky a couple of times. And in those days, this was before you could push out on the break, you know, after the break, and you had to kick at it. And and the tables was playing fast, and she hooked herself, made some uncharacteristic mistakes, and Lori John took advantage of it and she won the tournament. Now we can go to 1987.

Mike Gonzalez 31:47

So All right. Well, yeah, we're we're there. And and so Jean Belukis wins seven tournaments that year. You win three tournaments that year, Lori John wins two tournaments that year. So pretty good year. Uh, even though uh admittedly you probably weren't really considered a tournament player. You probably took more pride as in terms of what you did on the road, no?

Mary Kenniston 32:08

Uh well, uh it was I was kind of torn because, you know, uh the at that time, and Mark, I know you remember this, you know, we always were on the, you know, we were always on the verge of becoming a mainstream sport. Men went through, you know, a million different organizations. The women were always the WPBA, and then uh and then Jean started playing with the men and they didn't like it because she started beating a few of them. We thought that was really stupid that they barred her. Well, they didn't bar her, they just changed the name of their association from the Professional Billiard Association to the Men's Professional Billiard Association, effectively barring any female. But we always thought that that was pretty dumb because if you remember Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs is what put women's tennis on the map. And we thought that Jean playing in the men's division and beating them sometimes, she wasn't playing good enough to beat to win a tournament, but she played good enough to beat a couple of them each time, you know? And we'll go to the wire with them. Remember, she went, she played Nick Varner in Toledo, and she got to the hill first, and he managed to win 11 to 10. And I happened to be sitting there watching the match, and he behind his chair, and he comes over and he looks at me and he says, Man, he says, uh, I'm so glad I won. Yeah. She had such a great break. It wasn't that she played as good as they did, but she probably had had, except for Billy Johnson, Wade Crane, she probably had the best break in the in the uh out of all the players. She was thunderous break.

Mike Gonzalez 33:53

I don't think we talked about this, Mary, but didn't you beat her in a pool match? In a straight pool match back in 1976?

Mary Kenniston 34:01

Yeah, that was the that was a straight pool tournament. It was the Pennsylvania State Straight Bull Championship, and and it came down to she and I in the hot seat, and I beat her, and uh, she was furious and wouldn't shake my hand, nothing.

Allison Fisher 34:18

She was anyway on sportsman like conduct.

Mary Kenniston 34:23

She was awful, you know, well anybody that showed any any anybody that she perceived as a threat, she was not nice to. And and I was always a threat. And anyway, beat her. And her father, you know, he used to take her to the tournaments, you know, because she was still underage. And he was the first one to come over and shake and congratulate me, give me a hug. Because he knew how big that was, you know, what a milestone it was, you know. Now, I ended up she ended up winning the tournament anyway. I was probably the only player that was second to her in a lot of events. And and the reason I well, I know the reason. She broke better. She just had the had the had I played better position than she did uh during that stretch, but she broke better. And she'd break and make, you know, one, two, three balls on the break, and I'd be lucky to make one. And but I always managed to stay with her, you know, because I played better shape than she did. So if I I I think it was the break that made the difference. And as it and then later on, when she started competing with the men, well, she'd always played in local tournaments, uh, men's tournaments. Um but Pat Fleming started working with her and taught her how to use English and how to in a flight position. And so then she became part of the beat, and then she became uh she started playing in the men's events.

Allison Fisher 36:06

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