When students are back on campus, you can find members of Pacific Billiards Club—or as they nicknamed themselves “Stripes and Solids”—at the Lair in the DeRosa University Center pretty much at any time.
They are in it for the game and for the tight friendships they have formed since the club started about three years ago. Their 10 members represent majors in communications, economics, English, math, graphic design, music and health exercise. We talked to club president Isabel Enriquez ’21
Q: How did you decide to join the club?
Isabel Enriquez ’21, club president, graphic design major: I actually co-founded the club with my partner, about two or three years ago. When he graduated, I became president. Basically, the reason why we started the club in the first place was that we were there so often, and we had been making a group of friends who always played pool, and we just decided to make an actual club of it. We wanted to grow that community as much as we could.
Q: Did you already know how to play pool when you came to Pacific?
Isabel: Not that much, to be honest. Pool definitely became a bigger part of my life when I first came to Pacific. Before that, I would go with my dad, who is a professor, to his work in summer and I would just be playing pool in a student lounge a little bit over the summer while he was teaching. So, that’s what was my initial interest and then, when I came to Pacific, it just increased by tenfold.
Q: How important is the club in your life as a student?
Isabel Enriquez: Pool became a bigger part of my life because of the people that I met through playing pool. I like to think that our club is definitely a close community, and I really pride myself about how close our community is and how close our friendships are.
Q: How can someone become a member of the club?
Isabel: People can usually find us at the Lair playing pool almost any time of the day or when we had our weekly club meetings pre-pandemic. At the moment, they can reach out either through email or Instagram. The whole point of the club is just to make the sport fun and enjoyable, and it is also a chance to hang out together and meet new people.
Q: How good do you have to be at billiards to join the club?
Isabel: I like to think that we’re very inclusive, and we always try to invite new people whenever we see someone new playing pool at the Lair. That’s usually our main way of getting new members. There’s no certain time that they have to become a member; it’s more just timing or opportunity.
As for how good you have to be, there’s no expectation whatsoever. We welcome anyone who might be slightly interested or anyone who’s done this for a long time.
Q: Where do you usually play and hold your meetings?
Isabel: Our meetings would be upstairs in the Lair since that’s where the two pool tables are at Pacific. But sometimes, just for a change of pace, we would go out to public pool halls like Eddie’s Pizza in Stockton. They also have just more billiards tables so, more people have an opportunity to play.
Q: What events and activities do you normally have in the club during the year?
Isabel: During our general meetings once a week, we would have workshops for anybody who would like to learn. Aside from that, we would also have tournaments at least once a semester, and that was open to anyone in the public. You did not have to be part of the club. Also, we used to play against other schools, but that was a bit complicated, and I’m not sure if we’ll be moving forward with that anymore.
Q: Billiards is really an in-person sport, how did the club members stay in contact during the pandemic?
Isabel: It’s been a bit of a struggle. None of us have gotten to play much since most of the pool halls closed in our areas. But we kept in contact on Discord and we usually played video games and have voice calls pretty often. Over the spring break, we decided to come back to Stockton campus and then went up to Sacramento because there was a pool hall open there, and we just wanted to make a day of it.
Q: What do members of your club geek out about?
Isabel: A lot of us have such different personalities, the beauty of it is that we all geek out about different things or get excited about different things.
Q: Do you require your members to have their own cues?
Isabel: We don’t require members to have their own cues. When we first started out, the club had our own cues which we lent to other members. Eventually, if members had enough interest in the sport and decided they wanted to make that investment, we’d help them choose a decent cue.
Q: Is there anything else that you would like people to know about the club?
Isabel: We’re very welcoming. We always encourage new people to join. We’re very encouraging about learning, about getting better, making each other better, because there’s still that healthy competition among each other.
To contact Stripes and Solids, Pacific Billiards Club:
Instagram @pacificstripesorsolids
Email at uopstripesorsolids@gmail.com
