Junior Player of the Month
Tatum Cutting
Junior Player of the Month
By SKIP MALONEY - AZB STAFF / PHOTOS - CHRIS REINHOLD
She knew going in that she was only going to get one shot at it.
T
hree months into her 18th year, Tatum Cutting of Diamond, OH, signed on to participate in the first-ever series of junior tournaments, collectively known as the Junior International Championships (JIC), held under the auspices of Ra Hanna and his On the Wire Creative Media, which commenced this past January. Her ‘one shot’ consisted of the year-long quest to win the 18 & Under Girls Division of the JIC, which she did, just a few weeks shy of turning 19. Not, however, without encountering a few bumps along the road, which forced her to rethink certain aspects of her game. She, like many of her fel-
42 | Billiards Buzz • December 2021
low competitors, were growing up in a lot of different ways in the year of JIC competition and the lessons learned, as they say, were like bridges burned. You only needed to cross them once. There were also a few bumps along the road she traveled just to get to the Junior International Championships; things she couldn’t have foreseen or done much about, not to mention a ‘bump’ that was out of her control altogether. It was an accident of birth that disqualified her for participation in this past year’s BEF Junior National Championships. BEF rules governing participation in its annual event dictate that if you age out of a
division at any point during the year that the championships are held, you cannot compete in that division. Tatum turned 19 on Nov. 16, 2021, five months after the Junior Nationals were held at the South Point Hotel & Convention Center in Las Vegas, but was disqualified from entry due to the restriction. This also prevented her from getting an invitation to the World Junior Championships, which were originally scheduled for Las Vegas, but were relocated to Austria due to COVID restrictions. Predator Cues, though, invited her to attend the concurrently-run Predator Austria Women’s Open, where she went three-andout.
