photo by: Nick Krug

Sharp Shooters player John Trieu, Lawrence, scans the table before shooting during a league play pool match on Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2016 at The Eighth Street Taproom. Trieu and five other members of the Sharp Shooters will be traveling to Las Vegas to compete in the over 800-team APA 8-Ball World Championships this week.

In the game of pool, tales of big money games, rough venues and even rougher people roll off the tongue about as often as the balls roll along the green felt.

Sometimes the stories even come with a prop, like the left hand of Lawrence resident Noble Lathrom. It features a protruding carpal bone and some fingers that don’t quite lay straight. How it got that way about 50 years ago, Lathrom admits, sounds a bit like a scene from Paul Newman’s famous pool hall movie “The Hustler.”

“See how crooked them fingers are? I got them broken on Canal Street in Chicago, Illinois,” he offers. “It was a pretty tough place. That was whenever women couldn’t go into the pool halls.”

Soon, Lathrom hopes he’ll have another story to tell, and a less painful prop: a world 8-ball championship trophy. For the second year in a row, Lathrom is leading a Lawrence-based team to the American Poolplayers Association 8-Ball World Championships in Las Vegas.

He even thinks that rough night in Chicago may help him some. This sport already has tested his nerves many times before.

“That’s why I don’t really get shook up over going and playing (in the world championships),” he said.

Lathrom is 72 years old, and his risk of being assaulted before, during or after a game of pool has narrowed considerably. Women are allowed in pool halls and two of them, Ann Cop and Lathrom’s fiancee Inge Housworth, are on his team. Their team is the Sharp Shooters, and they advanced to the world championships after winning the Northeast Kansas APA 8-Ball Championships. More than 800 teams from the United States, Canada and Japan will be competing at the Las Vegas tournament.

Although their first match won’t be until until 1 p.m. Vegas time on Tuesday, the Sharp Shooters– comprising Lathrom, Housworth and Cop, as well as Lathrom’s son, Garrett Lathrom, Jake Trieu, and John Robbins IV, all of Lawrence — will be packing up and heading to Vegas on Sunday. They hope to leave their nerves behind.

“You have to learn to adapt to it,” says Noble Lathrom, who believes keeping your nerves and emotions in check is as important as knocking down shots. “Each level adds a certain amount of pressure.”

The pregame jitters don’t seem to factor into the equation for success for some players, such as Garrett Lathrom, who says he has grown accustomed to shooting in the anchor spot for his team.

“Ultimately, it’s just another game to me,” he said.

Before the championship game of the Northeast Kansas 8-Ball tournament, which was played at the Capitol Plaza Hotel in Topeka on June 5, the younger Lathrom recalls noticing his opponent’s hands shaking before the match.

“That’s when I turned to our team and told them, ‘We’re going to Vegas because his nerves are going to get him,'” Garrett said.

“If I lose, I look at it like the other guy was better than me. If I win, I look at it like I was better,” he said. 

To create a better team, the elder Lathrom regularly imparts his knowledge on the younger Sharp Shooter players as he says he always has to those wishing to learn the game. 

“In this town, there’s probably 100 people that I’ve taught to play pool over the last 50 years,” he said.

On Tuesday night during a league game at Eighth Street Taproom, 801 New Hampshire St., John Trieu, the youngest player on the team, widened his stance before breaking several games into a match. In a quick and powerful motion, Trieu created a startling noise as he sent the cue ball flying off the back end of the table and crashing off the wall to the hardwood floor without touching a single ball in the rack. With Trieu noticeably frustrated, Lathrom walked over to settle him down.

When asked to divulge his advice, Lathrom said, “I told him, the other guy is shooting hard, so he’s trying to shoot hard, too. Slow down. You can make the ball just as good if you shoot easy. And he will.”

Heeding Lathrom’s advice, Trieu settled himself and worked through the next few games much more collected, defeating his opponent and awarding points to the Sharp Shooters. 

Lathrom will be the first to explain that there are no hard and fast rules that govern every shot and decision once the balls are broken up, with the exception of maybe two. Control the cue ball and don’t shoot too hard. Within the lexicon of American pool players is the term “banger,” which is considered a derogatory term for a player who wields a cue stick like a sledgehammer. 

“If you can control the cue ball, you can win,” Lathrom said. “If you shoot it any harder than it takes to get to the pocket, you’ve shot it too hard.”

Squashing nerves and promoting smart pool play are the manageable aspects of keeping a tournament team competitive. Those can be difficult. So too can be not letting the drinking culture that has long surrounded the game derail your chances. However, erring on the side of being a realist, Noble Lathrom believes that imbibing judiciously isn’t necessarily a bad move.

“It depends,” Lathrom cautiously began to explain. “If you have a drink or two, to kinda calm down and then stop, good. A lot of people can’t stop and pretty soon they can’t hit a ball anywhere. I love to have a shot of tequila before I play. It mellows you out.”

On that note, an emphasis about this year’s world championship run that Lathrom is stressing to his team is the importance of taking care of business first. 

“If we win, then we’ll party,” he said.

Lathrom, Housworth and the rest of the Sharp Shooters have decided against bedding down at the Westgate Resort or within close proximity of the shining lights and other temptations along the Las Vegas strip. However, the whole team will be staying together under one roof.

“We rented a house through Airbnb,” Lathrom noted.

“One with a pool table,” Housworth added.