Local Ferrum student Kevin Nester will travel to Nevada to compete in BCA Pool League World Championships at the end of the month.
Local Ferrum student Kevin Nester will travel to Nevada to compete in BCA Pool League World Championships at the end of the month.
Nester graduated from Patrick County High School in 2021 and is now a junior at Ferrum College. He is studying sports management with the intention to someday work on the business side of a professional sports administration after graduation.
He is on the track and field team, the tennis team and the honors society at Ferrum. In his free time, Nester enjoys playing pool.
A little over a year ago, Nester began playing pool recreationally when he would come home during breaks from college. It began as a way for him to bond with his father, Gary Nester, who played pool frequently when his son was younger.
They discovered Top Shelf Billiards in Collinsville and then playing pool together became a regular activity in their lives.
“Me and him, we just worked together and we got really, really close and connected over it,” Nester said.
The two play in a pool league called BCAPL which is sanctioned in different regions. Most pool rooms have their own division, Nester said, and he and his father joined the league that was available to them at Top Shelf.
”We just started shooting just out of fun and then we started winning matches,” he said. Their team — made up of Nester, his father and three friends — was first of the eight teams that competed at Top Shelf in a competition. Their victory led to their qualification for a competition in Nevada later this month.
”It started as just a fun way to spend time with guys on Wednesday nights and it turned into we’re getting ready to qualify for something really huge,” Nester said.
The team will now compete in the BCAPL World Championships in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the end of the month — the whole championship spans from Feb. 21 to March 2.
Nester will bring a team of five to Nevada with him including himself, his father, Keith Tosh, Don Grimes and Tim Osgood who is the owner of Top Shelf Billiards.
The team will compete in the 8-Ball Teams division of the tournament, which is similar to standard pool played with eight balls that are either solids or stripes. The players main goal is to get their balls in and then sink the eight ball, but Nester said a lot more strategy goes into competition pool than just a regular recreational game.
Nester said when he first started playing it was casual but he then started to learn all the different strategies and tactics, both defensive and offensive, that are involved in playing competitively.
For team pool, each member on the team will play their own individual matches with members of another team with each round consisting of four different matches. The players then rotate between rounds so they play different members of the other team.
The team is currently preparing for its competition in different time slots at Top Shelf. They play against each other and different players there to hone their skills.
Nester said he never thought when he started playing pool casually that they would ever get to this end result.
”Absolutely not,” he said. “This is just something that is a bucket list item and we just … started playing together and we got really good. We played really good because there was no pressure — it was just fun and laughs.”
But now that they’re headed across the country to compete, Nester said, the goal is to win.
”The competitor in you wants to win it,” he said. “But I’m getting to go do something that I love to do with my dad and it’s just a blessing that we have the ability to spend that time together and also compete.”
”It’s hard to put it in words,” Nester said on the importance of this experience with his father. “He’s always been the closest person in my life and growing up I’ve always set my goals and aspirations to be like him.”
”Now that we’re doing something that we both enjoy doing and we’re kind of on the same playing field — we’re just progressively getting better and it’s amazing,” he added.
This article was originally published by the Martinsville Bulletin, written by Monique Holland. Click to view the original article.