OK…let’s wrap up the holiday weekend with a bit of trivia about billiards in The Villages.
QUESTION: What are the 3 oldest Men’s Billiards Leagues in TV?
HINT: Look at the menu bar on my website-:)
All 3 of these leagues started in the basement of the Paradise Rec Center (now the library) before those tables were moved over to Silver Lake. The OBG Men’s Billiard Club is the original one and was started by Al Parker. That name may ring a bell for those who play in the 3rd Thursday of the month tourney at Silver Lake.
That league was running smoothly until Bill Willette, the president at the time, decided to change the format. Wylie Carroll got permission for a Monday league that used the original format – 2 games of 9-Ball and 2 games of 8-Ball. A few years down the road, Wylie passed away and Al Brinson took the reins. Al became seriously ill in 2012 then Tom Fetherling and Bill Turechek took over, renaming the league Wylie Carroll/Al Brinson Memorial League.
The 3rd of the original billiards leagues is the Hickey League that I now run with the help of Grover Henderson. Don started what was then called the Men’s Advanced League in 1998 and ran both the morning and afternoon divisions on Thursdays. Shortly after I came down here in 2010, I met Don while playing in Barry Curtis’ league at Hacienda – the first league I joined. Don and I hit it off and he invited me to join his afternoon league. In 2014 I started tracking the stats for the league in a spreadsheet. Then as Don’s health started to fail, he handed over the morning league to Barry Curtis who then handed it over to Ron Boyle in 2021.
Don ran the league for 17 years then handed the reins over to me. At his going away party in 2016, I renamed the league the Hickey league in his honor. Everyone pretty much always referred to it as that anyway!
That’s a brief overview of those leagues. For more details, go to Bill Turechek’s Brinson league website here and the Hickey League page on my site here. You’ll also see an old video there of the guys playing in the Paradise Rec Center.
