Arizona Rating Committee Votes to Redefine the Ratings

On July 12th, 2009, the Arizona Rating Committee met for the 3rd time of the year at River City Pockets in Phoenix, Arizona. On the ticket were many impassioned topics and all the supporting rooms came out to voice their opinions. Participating rooms included: Sweet Tooth Billiards, Yuma, River City, Pockets Tucson, Kolby's, Deli Sportsbar, Northern AZHSPL, Bullshooters, Billiards & Dart News, Kitty's, Main St. Mesa, Knobby's, Groggy's, JackAss (Prescott), The OX and Uptown Billiards (Flagstaff).

The top subject of the meeting was the Lowering of All Arizona Rated Players by one Rating Number. Larry Eans, from the Northern Lounge, had proposed at the previous meeting for members to take the time between meetings to review the positive and negatives of restructuring the entire system.

Many years ago the Rating system was developed and Don Rose created definitions of the separations between each rating. The Committee came together and decided that we need to get back to the original ratings. There were many discussions leading up to this decision and it was determined that it was in the best interest of everyone to make this change.

The benefits of this adjustment effects every rating and were deemed as a necessary step in moving forward in a positive direction. At first look it appeared that just higher rated players would benefit from this change as they can play in more tournaments. But lower rated players are the true winners in this move. In the old format a Handicap minus 3 tournament would pit an 8 rated player to race to 5 games where a 7 rated player would race to 4. In the new format the race would be 4 and 3. As we all know a shorter race benefits the lower rated player and a long race benefits the better player. In addition, the value add of having solid definitions about each rating helps control raising of persons too quickly.

The Rating Changes will go into effect starting on August 1st, 2009. All persons that were individually brought up at the meeting to be raised or lowered went into effect immediately.

One of the hopes of these efforts to get more players to come out and show support to our pool rooms, especially during this tough economy. Whereas another is to show the public that the Rating Committee is listening and is making strides to correct some imbalance from years past.

The vote was cast and passed with a 13 - 5 vote.  The 5 'No' votes were cast by Dick Breese (Metro Sportz), Patrick Zientek (Billiards & Dart News), Rick Morris (The OX), George Cruz (Uptown Billiards) and Kathy Crout (Groggy's).  In addition, all the players Dick Breese had listed to be added or raised were not submitted to the committee.

The Definitions are posted up on AZPoolScene.com for all to view at http://www.azpoolscene.com/Ratings.aspx.

Special thank you to committee members from Yuma, Tucson, Prescott and Flagstaff for making the effort to attend every meeting and also doing what you can to rate as many active players and adding them to the overall list.

Congratulations to those players that were promoted to a higher rating.
Players graduating to 6’s: Veronica Poore, John Walsh, Rick O'Boyle and Miquel Valadez
7’s: Pat Mahoney, Eric Rima, Rich Davidson, Doug Tenhagen and Jerry Strickland
8’s: Dean Martin, Randy Thompson, Matt Spade, AJ Tuley, Tony Major and Lee Erbe
9’s: Tyler Lovendahl, P.J. Ericson, Michael Thompson, Steve Blackburn, Carlos Avalos and Robery Berry
10’s: Frank Robutz
(Note: These players will also move down one rating on Aug. 1st, which is like they never moved rating)

In addition, four players petitioned the committee in person with proposals to be lowered. All four of them were granted: Sophia Morquecho was lowered to a 6, Dale Teague was lowered to a 9, David Rueb and Harold Lyons were lowered to 8’s.

The next Rating meeting will be held at Kolby’s in Tempe, Arizona on October 4th, 2009, at Noon. Most meeting run for 2 hours and the public is more than welcome to come and be apart of the meeting.

I was contacted today by Al Ruiz of Metro Sportz and he informed me that Dick Breeze did not represent him personally. There was a misunderstanding and Metro Sportz is and always has supported the rating committee. Whatever was said by Dick to the committee has been stricken from the record. My understanding is that they are still going to present their list of players to be added to the rating book.  -Addendum 7/15/2009, Jerry Stuckart.