Old Woman Plays Snooker
SHE is 91 and has been potting snooker balls for almost half a century, but June Deroubaix is not ready to put the cue in the rack.
And rightly so, the Leabrook great-grandmother is in training for the Women’s State Snooker Championships — and hopes to win.
“Well naturally I want to win, doesn’t everybody?” Deroubaix says.
“But mostly I want to improve my play.
She says her coach has worked to change her game but she is “going along with it because I want to be a better player”.
The Eastern Courier Messenger last week visited Deroubaix as she went through her paces at Billiard and Snooker SA’s tables at West Adelaide Football Club, the venue for the state titles on July 1.
As she walks, cue in hand around her table, carefully plotting her next shot, the diminutive Deroubaix recounts her introduction to the sport she would come to live and breathe.
“I was 47 and I had brought up six sons and a daughter and when they were going to school I needed something to do,” she says.
“I joined a ladies’ club and they just happened to have a full-size snooker table.
“The other ladies were not interested, but I took to it like a duck to water. It was nice and quiet, it was good for the brain and the weather did not effect it.”
In a male-dominated sport, Deroubaix was a pioneer — she was among the first female members of the Billiards and Snooker Association and won Australia’s first women’s tournament at Blacktown Workers Club in Sydney.
She won gold at the Masters Games in Adelaide in 1989, about 20 years before she made a permanent move to SA.
“I found it very hard to find a table here where I could play during the day … so I was very glad this opened,” Deroubaix says of Westies’ 12-table venue, which she frequents “two or three times a week”.
Billiard and Snooker SA venue manager Shawn Budd jokes that Deroubaix will likely be the oldest player in the upcoming women’s championship by “40 or 50 years”.
Not that the great-grandmother of 16 will use that as an excuse.
“I am so used to playing against men, you see,” she says.
“So I have to make sure that I do not go too soft on the other ladies.”
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/messenger ... 58c6d93b83
And rightly so, the Leabrook great-grandmother is in training for the Women’s State Snooker Championships — and hopes to win.
“Well naturally I want to win, doesn’t everybody?” Deroubaix says.
“But mostly I want to improve my play.
She says her coach has worked to change her game but she is “going along with it because I want to be a better player”.
The Eastern Courier Messenger last week visited Deroubaix as she went through her paces at Billiard and Snooker SA’s tables at West Adelaide Football Club, the venue for the state titles on July 1.
As she walks, cue in hand around her table, carefully plotting her next shot, the diminutive Deroubaix recounts her introduction to the sport she would come to live and breathe.
“I was 47 and I had brought up six sons and a daughter and when they were going to school I needed something to do,” she says.
“I joined a ladies’ club and they just happened to have a full-size snooker table.
“The other ladies were not interested, but I took to it like a duck to water. It was nice and quiet, it was good for the brain and the weather did not effect it.”
In a male-dominated sport, Deroubaix was a pioneer — she was among the first female members of the Billiards and Snooker Association and won Australia’s first women’s tournament at Blacktown Workers Club in Sydney.
She won gold at the Masters Games in Adelaide in 1989, about 20 years before she made a permanent move to SA.
“I found it very hard to find a table here where I could play during the day … so I was very glad this opened,” Deroubaix says of Westies’ 12-table venue, which she frequents “two or three times a week”.
Billiard and Snooker SA venue manager Shawn Budd jokes that Deroubaix will likely be the oldest player in the upcoming women’s championship by “40 or 50 years”.
Not that the great-grandmother of 16 will use that as an excuse.
“I am so used to playing against men, you see,” she says.
“So I have to make sure that I do not go too soft on the other ladies.”
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/messenger ... 58c6d93b83
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