By Kieth Shaner
W
e, in the pool world, have had mad rush of young talent being celebrated like never before in the history of our sport. We’ve also had a huge surge in youth initiatives and available events for Juniors, tours, national events, and Junior worlds.
Lockhart & Ernie Drumm) a treasurer (Stella Pegan), and a league secretary (Mari Church). They originally operated out of Drumm’s Family Billiards at their Main Street location in 2015 playing APA and feeling their way through the process.
Today, I would like to introduce everyone to one of those initiatives, The Licking County Ohio Junior Billiards Program!
When the 2016 season began, they had solidified their program a bit more and added a few new players. They also had switched to NAPA.
I have had a part-time association with this group over the years, and I have seen many young players develop and I have seen this program grow bigger every year. I spoke with Stella Pegan recently on their program. Here is their story…
2017 saw some big changes in the program, they were now playing VNEA, the program added and reshuffled their officers and trainers. Eight players went to the VNEA Junior Championships that year and placed in two team events.
A little history A lady, here in Newark, originally started a junior program but due to some personal events happening, she couldn’t continue. So, Stella Pegan and William Lockhart, after some discussion, decided to take over, as their son WJ was already involved in the game, and they were familiar with many of kids.
Another big change came in 2018 as they moved to Newark’s Townz Family Billiards. They now had fifty kids in their program, so they divided the league into 2 divisions (A & B) and they began staggering the training, with the older A division doing their 2 hours of training and league play and then the younger B division would come in and do their 2 hours.
They started with two trainers (William
They continued to thrive over the next 3 42
