Fashion Designer Cues Women Billiard Players on How to Look Their Best at the Table
Just imagine billiards legend Minnesota Fats watching a pool tournament . . . and all the players are wearing formal gowns!
No doubt Fats might think of chalking it up, so to speak, but that fashionable approach isn’t so surprising to Laura C. Campbell of San Clemente, who may be the country’s only designer of apparel for women billiard players.
But while the dress code for professional billiard tournaments is mock tuxedos or evening gowns, Campbell said, some women believe it has drawbacks. One top woman professional said it hurt her “killer instinct” when she wore a pretty gown.
So Campbell has been commissioned to design a new tournament outfit that will include a jacket, tailored slacks, blouse, a vest and flat shoes instead of the T-shirts and jeans some women wear in amateur play.
“The sport really has had a bad image with drinking, gambling and dark pool halls,” said Campbell, 50, who changed from an interior designer to develop billiard fashions and cue sticks for female players. “Some of that image is still there but pool is getting better support from women who want to play billiards and look good doing it.”
She said a 1986 Billiard Digest survey showed that nearly 7 million women shoot pool in the United States, “and although we don’t have the statistics for other countries, we know it is an elite and active sport for women in other countries.”
“Billiards is the only sport that doesn’t have clothes made specifically for that sport,” said Campbell, who sometimes plays a social game of billiards at home with her husband, Paul C. Rubalcava, 48. He designs and manufactures leather pockets for pool tables.
Although billiards depends on touch and feel, “which women are better at than men,” Campbell said, “it has been a man’s sport.” But because it’s not a physical sport, she believes, “more women are taking part. It’s an elite game and there really isn’t an age limit.”
She said billiards has long been used as therapy for senior citizens.
Campbell thinks she has done her homework and will soon be in the center of a burgeoning sport for women who want to look feminine playing pool. “I already have three women professionals wearing my clothes,” she said, “and I’ve been working with the Women’s Professional Billiards Assn. to establish a new dress code for future tournaments.”
Her fashion line is called Katie Kue.
Besides an increase in professional women players, she said, young girls are being groomed to play billiards, much like young female tennis players. “A lot of family billiard parlors are opening,” Campbell said, “where they can learn their craft.” But she said the real action is in other countries.
“Japan is very big in billiards,” she said.
Training and motivation consultant Jacqueline de River-Daniel of Orange calls herself a “risk-taker” and her workshop on “The New Woman Entrepreneur” at Fullerton Community College certainly was one of those risks.
No one showed up.
“This is part of life,” she said, “and if you don’t reach your market, you just go out and create another one.”
That’s motivation.
“When a school like this becomes so good,” said Mater Dei parent spokesman Maurice D. Kramer, “the other schools get better by rising to the occasion, so to speak.”
He was referring to the recent competition in Florida for the annual National Dance Team Competition for high schools, which Mater Dei of Santa Ana won even though it was the first time the squad took part in the prestigious event. It might be noted, however, that the squad won the international title last year in Japan.
The squad comprises head song leader Judy Doyle, Kara Booker, Amy Conrad, Beth Howard, Julie Keller, Tricia Kramer, Elizabeth Lener, Maura McGlinn, Colleen O’Connor, Kerry Owens, Christine Ramirez and Kelly Reinhardt.
And today, the Mater Dei varsity and junior varsity cheerleader squads are in Florida for cheerleading competition.
The other schools have to be in tough. Last year Mater Dei won first in junior varsity and third in varsity.
Acknowledgments--Single parent Kimberly Birkheimer, mother of two, named winner of the annual Soroptimist International of Fullerton $400 training award. She works as a waitress at night and is a master’s candidate in psychology at Cal State Fullerton. Fullerton High student Carla Hiltscher won the club’s Youth Citizenship Award.
