William Gwynne, co-president of the St John’s Pool Society, describes how the sport’s popularity has reached an all-time high in college.
From the first day, many Freshers gravitated to the Bailey Room, and then of course to the pool table. Entire friendship groups were formed over the first few days through meeting each other around the table, playing together and chatting to one another. From there, St John’s has gone crazy for pool, and it has brought a huge chunk of the St John’s community together.
The first major pool event of last term was the St John’s Michaelmas Freshers’ Pool Competition, which had 44 competitors, making up for a huge chunk of the entire year group. In a knockout-styled tournament, every match had spectators and then built up to the crescendo that was the Semi-Finals and Final event, held on October 25th. With music, speeches, introductions and over 30 spectators, the final 4 in the competition fought it out, with ‘Engineer Ethan’ Bytheway coming out victorious in the final against ‘Milan The Iceman’ Grubits.
On the topic of the finalists, we have to talk about the story of the term so far. In the first round of the tournament, Luca Hughes Joshi was knocked out by Elisabeth Salmon. But, from all the losers of the first round, totalling half of the competitors, one Lucky Loser was chosen at random to continue, and the name chosen was Luca. This was the beginning of a series of remarkable events, as Luca then paved his way into the semi-finals. Every match he went in with a pint in hand as the underdog, and in a battle of wills managed to somehow emerge as the victor, eventually losing to Milan Grubits in the semi-final in what was again an incredibly close frame. His story spread around the college like the wind, and he is now known as ‘Lucky Luca’.
But St John’s Pool time is not just limited to the confines of the physical college. This term has been filled with the Inter-College Pool League, of which we have six teams competing. With the majority of our teams being formed from Freshers, with some older years lending their expertise, there has been huge improvement against opponents who are overwhelmingly more experienced, usually having featured in the league for numerous years. The St John’s strength is the support, as when our team has had an away fixture at another college, they have been accompanied by a swathe of spectators, such as the St John’s C-Team picture at St Mary’s. The room was filled to the brim with 18 spectators from St John’s.
Under the great leadership of Co-President Abi Court, the participation of St John’s in the Inter-College Pool League was organised, and we have so much more planned! Across the Epiphany Term, the second St John’s Pool singles and doubles tournaments will be taking place, and I have no doubt they will be filled with the same enthusiasm, laughter and passion that have dominated the Michaelmas term. Other colleges have commented on how John’s take their pool seriously, but have a laugh with their friends as they do so. We will carry that forward. We now all bleed blue for St John’s Pool.
John's Chronicle 