Justin Bergman - Part 1 (The Making of the “Iceberg”)

Mike Gonzalez 0:13

Welcome to another edition of Legends of the Q and Mark Wilson. Not only do we have a guy with ex with exceptional talent that you've been around for a long, long time, this may be the first podcast we've done where all of us are Cardinal fans.

Mark Wilson 0:31

Hey yeah. All right. Well, today we have a special show, as this particular interview will be a little bit different. This story is quite a bit my story. I first met him in 1997 when I had moved to St. Louis. I love him when it's my adopted son. Please welcome the iceberg, Justin Bergman. How are you guys doing?

Justin Bergman 0:53

Happy to be here. We're glad to have you.

Mike Gonzalez 0:56

Great to be with you, Justin. And uh, as I mentioned, we're all Redbird fans. Of course, Mark and I go back a little bit longer than you do in terms of following them, but you came on board to you were born in the year that they lost the series to the Twinkies.

Justin Bergman 1:09

Yeah, yeah. Mark actually took me to a game the the year that Mark McGuire broke the home run record.

Mike Gonzalez 1:16

How cool is that!

Justin Bergman 1:17

You remember that? I certainly do. He hit a home run that game, too.

Mark Wilson 1:22

It was oddity. And uh I was the house bro at Teachers Billiards where I met Justin, and I had a couple day game businessman special, and so I asked his dad if he could go with me. So we went to the ballgame, and I guess the cameraman thought that we were father and son, and they isolated us during an inning, and out on the jumbotron way out there, I'd bought him a hot dog, and so we were sitting in the stands close up, and Justin had mustard all over his face like that. And that looked, hey, that's us, that's us. Oh, we had a great time.

Mike Gonzalez 1:51

Yeah, I'm sure we've we've all got great, uh, great cardinal memories, but I just happened to notice, Justin, that you were born kind of right after their good stretch in the 80s, and then they went dry for a long time, didn't they?

Justin Bergman 2:02

Yeah, that's my luck.

Mike Gonzalez 2:05

Well, anyway, nice to have you. Thanks for joining us. And as you probably know, we're we're here to tell your life story. And as we do with all of our guests, we go back to the very beginning, you know, where were you born, growing up, uh, talking about uh your family upbringing and everything else. So you were always been a St. Louis area guy, right? Where were you born?

Justin Bergman 2:23

Yeah, I was born in Granite City, which is you know five, ten minutes from where I live now. I live in Fairview Heights, just outside of St. Louis. Yeah, been here my whole life, probably will be here until I die. I like the area. All my family live here, all my friends. I don't really see myself moving it or living anywhere else. I had a few f few of my relatives that worked at Granite City Steel. Really? Yeah. Yeah. There used to be a pool room right down the road from there.

Mike Gonzalez 2:54

Is that right?

Justin Bergman 2:54

It's not there anymore. Yeah, Granite City Billiard Club, Mark Kimbrough owned it.

Mike Gonzalez 3:00

Did you guys live in Granite City for a while or have you always lived in Fairview Heights?

Justin Bergman 3:05

No, I always lived in Fair I think we lived in Belleville when I was uh, you know, an infant or for a year or two. But no, for pretty much my whole life I've been here.

Mike Gonzalez 3:15

Yeah, we got family in Bellville as well, as we talked about yesterday. I I I kind of hailed from Southern Illinois just a little bit uh east of you. But tell us about uh life growing up as a little kid in Fairview Heights.

Justin Bergman 3:26

Yes. It was good. I play used to play baseball actually. I was a pitcher. It's pretty good, and then pool got in the way of that. I knew I wanted to be a pool player pretty much from right when I picked up a queue. But I I tried to play all sports. Like I played basketball until like ninth grade, started playing a lot of golf, but pool was where uh my love was.

Mike Gonzalez 3:52

Well, if you were a good all-around athlete, then you had good hand-eye coordination, of course that comes through and uh and helps in pool too, doesn't it?

Justin Bergman 3:59

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Mike Gonzalez 4:01

So what about your baseball exploits? Pitcher with little league? Uh you go beyond little league in the high school or what?

Justin Bergman 4:07

Yeah, I I think I quit around eight s seventh, eighth grade and just I was, you know, having to pick from practice or a pool tournament. You know, and I always wanted to play pool, so Yeah, yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 4:20

So tell us about your folks, what'd they do?

Justin Bergman 4:23

Uh my dad he's worked at Boeing pretty much my whole life. And my mom worked at uh a local store called uh grandpa's for a long time. But they separated, they got a divorce, she moved to uh Arizona to be with her mom. She's still out there now.

Mike Gonzalez 4:41

So you you stayed with Pop then, huh?

Justin Bergman 4:43

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I had a happy happy childhood for sure. Any brothers or sisters? I do I have one sister, Danielle. Older, younger? She uh she's younger.

Mike Gonzalez 4:56

Okay.

Mark Wilson 4:57

All right.

Mike Gonzalez 4:57

Yeah. So she got spoiled before you did, probably then, huh? Yeah. Yeah. She's the favorite. Yeah, you blazed the trail for her, and then it was easy when when she came along, probably.

Justin Bergman 5:07

Yeah, that's right. She could play too. She can actually play pool, but she you know, yeah, she never took it serious. Did she play sports as well? She played soccer.

Mike Gonzalez 5:20

Okay.

Justin Bergman 5:21

I used to go to her games and all the time.

Mike Gonzalez 5:23

Well, soccer was big around you. I mean, Granite City, when I was in high school, they were winning the state title every year. Really? Oh yeah. They were really had a great soccer program.

Mark Wilson 5:32

Hmm.

Mike Gonzalez 5:33

Interesting. So did she play in high school and stuff then too?

Justin Bergman 5:36

Or no, she kind of quit seventh, eighth grade, didn't really take it serious.

Mike Gonzalez 5:42

But yeah, yeah. So you're kind of you're you're a young kid kind of growing up in the nineties. Boy, that seems like so long ago, Mark. Uh I don't know if Mark and I listened to much music back in the nineties. We were still stuck in the 60s and 70s, probably, but uh um what what what was the world like for you back as a young kid?

Justin Bergman 6:04

Um I just just normal riding my bike, um, hanging out with friends. I was actually hanging around a lot of adults too, you know, being in the pool rooms. Um you remember Lars? Lars my good fr best friend at the time, Lars Vartiman. We used to go everywhere. I was like 10, 11, 12, and he had was 16. He was always four or five years older than me. So he would take me around all the pool halls. We used to go to Mark's pool room and Collinsville all the time. So I I was always hanging around kids or uh uh adults older than me.

Mike Gonzalez 6:42

Yeah. And was that uh looking back on it, was that good in terms of the impressions it made on you?

Justin Bergman 6:48

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I had to grow up fast. Yeah. But that was more you know, when I was a a young kid, I lived a lot more normal life, I think, you know.

Mike Gonzalez 7:02

Yeah.

Justin Bergman 7:03

But once once I got got good at pool, I started, you know, hanging around the pool halls about age 13, 14. Yeah. About every night.

Mike Gonzalez 7:14

I can remember as a kid, I I played golf a lot as a kid, and and same thing. I played with a lot of older guys. And I'm when I say older guys, I mean they seem ancient, you know, when I'm when I'm 10 or 11. You know, they might have been in their twenties or thirties, but it made a good impression on me. I think it it helped me grow up as well. Yeah. You just learn a lot from some, you I mean, you can probably look back at some of the characters that would have been populated in the pool rooms, and you probably got some stories. Oh yeah, tons of stories.

Mark Wilson 7:42

Lots of characters. When I first met Justin, uh, he was playing in League Pool at Teacher's Billiards, and I'd moved here from uh Hong Kong, and teacher hired me to be the house burrow over there because I think the 50-mile journey back and forth got to be a little bit much. So I was there, and then here's Justin in there playing league, so here's a little kid. I'm thinking, okay, he was about 10, and I'm thinking, well, you know, whatever. And then meanwhile, he was wicked good at 10. I could not believe it. I've never seen anything like it. It was and oftentimes he'd have a little blue streak across his cheek because that's where the cue rode on all of his strokes, but serious now, a serious player, not horsing around, focused, trying to win, practicing, getting better. And it was just the most fascinating thing. I'd never seen anyone that had been that magnetic or maybe had maybe a little how would I put it? He was calm then. He could run out, and old guys with beards would ask him, where do I hit this shot here? And some gray bearded guy and just say, Hit it here, and he'd be right. That was on his team. You know, it was you remember those days? I do. I do. Yeah. I miss those days. He came up to me. I was playing on the Camel Pro Tour, and and he came up, hey, you want to play? I'm like, eh, it's a kid, I don't know. But I didn't want to be mean to him because he's a cute little guy. And so we played, and but he could break and run a rack on a nine-foot table when he was 10-11, uh not all the time, occasionally, but amazingly, you know. So yeah, those are good times.

Mike Gonzalez 9:12

So how did you get exposed to pool, Justin, for the first time?

Justin Bergman 9:16

My dad.

Mike Gonzalez 9:17

Yeah.

Justin Bergman 9:18

Was he a player? Uh league player, you know, your average, you know, league player. But uh my uncle actually had a uh eight-footer. Then we used to go over there pretty much every weekend. And it was a big uh they always would have parties, you know, and I had two cousins, they were probably, you know, six, seven, eight years older than me. So they were always having high school friends over and there'd we'd have three ball tournaments and they'd be playing a dollar a game and you know, I used to take their money. And that that's real that's really where I think I got hooked on pool. And then shortly after that my dad bought the same kind of table, an eight foot Gandhi. I think I got that for like my twelfth Christmas or something. You know, about when I was twelve years old, but uh yeah, and I'd I'd play on that table every single day. So you probably couldn't wait to get home from school. Oh yeah. That was the first thing I did. Drop my backpack off and go straight to the straight to the pool room. Do you still have it, Justin? That table? I do. I do. Yeah. So that's the one you have. Yeah, yeah.

Mark Wilson 10:34

I don't play on it as much. When I first met Justin, I was amazed, and then he would come to the pool room just about every day and practice. And so I said, Listen, I'll help you, but you have to promise me to always be good to the sport, or I don't want to do it. And he said he would. And he was training doing hard training exercises. Uh, we would probably do it three or four nights a week at three or four hours of the night. And he was he was good to begin with and then got much, much better as he saw. But I know that he went home and worked on that table. And then one time he says, Hey, Mark, I want to show you my table. And uh, I thought, well, okay. So I stopped by there to look at an eight-foot table. Well, then he actually ambushed me. And um, no, he it's tight little pockets on this, and he is ramming balls in from awkward angles all over the table. I'm like, and I'm losing a couple games in a row. And and the whole time, now this is how he got to be the iceberg. He might not admit this, but I'll tell it. He's beating me and uh I'm stunned and trying to get dialed in a little bit. And the whole time, Danielle, his little sister, is riding her tricycle around the table like a crazed person, as fast as she can, trying to aggravate him, but nothing bothered his focus. And then she's going around there in circles like a whirlwind. And one time she didn't get under his skin enough, so she flopped her Barbie dial up on the table. He just got up and repositioned himself and drew the cue ball around Barbie and ran out of me anyway. And so, you know, nothing's gonna happen. If you can deal with that, there's nothing gonna happen in the pool match that's more distracting than your little sister trying to annoy you. But that really so ever since he's been calm as could be. There's no pressure too big now.

Justin Bergman 12:16

It's like the Filipinos. Yes, yeah. All the hooting and hollering and chickens going off in the background.

Mike Gonzalez 12:25

No, yeah, that's a different environment to play in, what they deal with all the time, isn't it?

Mark Wilson 12:30

Yeah, yeah. Out playing outside. Sweltering heat, super slow table. Boy. Yeah, that was a rude awakening for me.

Mike Gonzalez 12:38

Now, now when the when the the people are all hovered around the table, right? I mean, they they they feel like you're in your hip pocket as you're trying to shoot. And then occasionally a guy will kind of lick his finger and mark one of the balls. So what's he doing there?

Justin Bergman 12:50

I heard that they mark it in case you so if you ever notice, they only do it when they're they're like bridging over a ball or like, you know, they might move a ball. That's it. If you move it, they don't play all ball fouls, so they would move it back and they know where to move it back. I always wondered why they did that.

Mark Wilson 13:08

Yeah, I thought it had to do with betting or something, maybe. Here's how they do it. In 15 ball rotation, you have to make an honest attempt to hit the ball. So if something's tangled up, you can't say, Oh, I almost hit it. I didn't hit it. So they mark them so that they can reposition the balls, the balls are the most likely to get moved, and then the referee can make you play again until he feels like you've made enough of an effort to or you hit it.

Mike Gonzalez 13:32

So that sounds like the old bar rules we played with you know, where you played no safeties and you're trying to make an honest attempt at every ball. We didn't mark them, but you know, you're playing safe and trying to fake it like you're not, right? Right, right. Yeah. That's why they do it. Yeah, exactly. Seems seemed kind of silly, but you know. So you get exposed uh through your father, eventually you're playing at your uncle's place, you play at your place. Is there anybody teaching you at the just those first year or two? Uh or had you already come across Mark or what?

Justin Bergman 14:06

I I met Mark probably I'd say a year or two after I got my table.

Mike Gonzalez 14:13

Okay.

Justin Bergman 14:14

Maybe around the same time. I got the eight-footer. I used to have a little Fisher Price pool table before before then.

Mike Gonzalez 14:23

How big was that? Was that like a foot and a half, two feet?

Justin Bergman 14:27

Uh I don't yeah, probably something like that, like a two by two or something. Mark, do you remember? I it was probably you sent me that picture earlier. Here's mine. Yeah, yeah. It was a little bigger than that, but yeah.

Mark Wilson 14:40

You play an eight-footer, I think I play an eight-incher here. I see Justin's sponsored by Brunswick. I'm gonna have to go for Fisher Price, I guess, to see if I get on with them.

Mike Gonzalez 14:50

So you had access to some pretty fine teaching then early on, Justin.

Justin Bergman 14:55

I was spoiled for sure. And then it was a great pool area, right, Mark? We had a lot of a lot of good players. Well, Brendan's was just on the street. Yeah. Yeah. I had probably four pool halls within a five-minute drive, and they were all on the same highway. 159. Yeah you know? Yeah. And they're all gone now, but you had sharkies. We had sharkies on 159. You had the billiard bullpen right off of 159, which was breakers before you had it. Mm-hmm. Brendan's and Fairview, and then Teachers, all on 159.

Mike Gonzalez 15:34

That's crazy. I I I I think I quoted this statistic, uh, Mark, uh, maybe when we were talking to Billy and Cardona, I don't remember. But we were talking about Chicago, right? And you like to always talk about that famous old place in Chicago. And and uh I saw some statistics that back in the 30s there were like 820 pool halls in Chicago. And today there's, you know, 11 or something like that. Right. It's happened all over, hasn't it?

Mark Wilson 16:02

Yeah. During the Depression in New York City, there was over 2,000 pool pool rooms. So Yeah. In St. Louis today, there's only one Q and Cushion. There's Saratoga Lane's that has five tables. Q and Cushion's a real pool room. And then you have to go to the teachers out in Lake St. Louis is the next closest after that. Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 16:21

Which is back in the heyday, Mark, when you were first uh I mean, in your younger days in St. Louis area, how many would they have had St. Louis area? Probably eleven or twelve, and they all had nine-footers. And probably as you go beyond just the whole metro area, you know, you look at uh American Legion Halls and BFWs and Amvetts and hell, they all had nine-footers back in the day, and bars did too. And the universities, too. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's changed. I mean, Justin and I talked about this a little bit, about how younger people in America uh are able to develop world championship skills when all they've got access to is seven foot tables. It's a little difficult, isn't it?

Justin Bergman 17:02

Definitely. Yeah. It's not you're I mean, you can still do it, right? But I think you gotta have super talent. And and then even then, I you know, you're not gonna beat somebody if they're training on a nine footer, right? And you're playing on a seven foot, you're at a disadvantage for sure.

Mike Gonzalez 17:21

Yeah. So I kind of get the impression that between pool and school pool probably won, huh?

Justin Bergman 17:29

Yeah. Definitely. I tried. I think I made it to about my junior year in high school, and then I was like, eh, school's not for me. I wanna I wanna try this. So I dropped out my senior year, actually.

Mike Gonzalez 17:47

Any any any uh looking back saying, uh, probably should have finished or didn't really matter?

Justin Bergman 17:53

No. No, not at all.

Mike Gonzalez 17:56

Yeah. So take us uh take us back uh those early years. You're just learning, you're working with Mark a little bit, 10, 11, 12 years old. Uh were you thinking at that time that, hey, I I don't know that I need to get a real job. I think I can probably do this for a living, or was this just still a young kid loving the game?

Justin Bergman 18:15

Probably a little bit of both. I mean, I was making money, you know, I was making pretty good money, actually, probably more than, you know, I could make at any job that I could have gotten.

Mike Gonzalez 18:26

Okay, so I made I made 40 cents a week delivering the Centralia Sentinel. Are you saying you made more than that? Yeah.

Justin Bergman 18:33

I mean, I I used to pretty much gamble every day and every night tournaments, you know, three or four days a week. And then by the time I could drive, you know, I was driving every week into a tournament, playing uh, you know, the best players around the Midwest, and and I was winning, you know, a lot of them. Or or if not, you know, cash and high.

Mark Wilson 18:57

Yeah.

Justin Bergman 18:57

And then gambling it almost every single tournament also.

Mike Gonzalez 19:01

So at age, let's say 16, were you were you making enough money where you could have supported yourself if you wanted to or needed to?

Justin Bergman 19:09

Yeah, I think so. I wasn't the greatest with money. I mean, as soon as I got money, it was it was gone. Uh, where'd it go? I was spending it faster than I was making it, probably, but uh it went to g more gambling. Okay. All right.

Mike Gonzalez 19:26

You weren't like a clothes horse or something just putting it all in your wardrobe, huh?

Justin Bergman 19:31

Yeah, that too. But it was mostly gambling.

Mark Wilson 19:35

More gambling. Yeah. Yeah. Back in the early days at Teachers, Justin played on league teams, and it seems to me it might have been with you and your dad and Jim Comley, and you had your own team. Is that right? Do you do you remember what I'm trying to remember here? Okay.

Justin Bergman 19:51

Yeah. Yeah. I was on so I think I played three or four nights a week league. Yeah. But yeah, for the most part, it was uh Lars, my dad, Jim, myself, and then there'd always be like Jerry Carver. There was a guy named Steve. Uh you would remember him, I think. Allison? No, Steve played on our team also. Oh, yeah. He was a real good player. I can't remember his last name, but he played with us a few times. You know, but usually it was us four, and then, you know, I think I played on Derek's team a few times. Yeah. Roy's Boys. That was Roy's Roy's boys, yeah.

Mark Wilson 20:33

Oh yeah. It was a funny time in that um Justin was so serious about Poole that you could see he'd already made peace with the fact that this is his destiny. He he's totally fixated. He wants to hear about Poole. And Lars Vardiman was also the same thing. Lars later became like a three-time national collegiate champion. And Lars chose to go into uh pharmaceutical uh studies, and Justin went into Poole. But up until that point, and Lars was kind of a tall, gangly kid, and Justin was little and cute and got all the attention. Plus, he played great. And and Lars liked it, and it was kind of the two of them. It was kind of a odd, he was tall and lanky, and Justin was serious and focused, and and Lars so wanted to be as good as Justin, and later did become that. But the two of them were kind of like the dynamic duo. And there was another guy that played on the pro tour, but he wasn't very good.

Mike Gonzalez 21:32

It would just kill him.

Mark Wilson 21:35

But they were very good too, to to be fair. You know, they were very good players even at a very young age. And I don't know if Justin will remember this, but anyway, I was tasked with running that league that they played in. And there was a lot of good players in the league. You remember like the guys from you know, three, five, eight leagues and like that, Justin all played pretty solid. Yeah. And so it was a good group, a good challenge, and Justin would Probably win. I want to say maybe he'd go two or three weeks in a row and not lose a game of eight ball against these guys. But if he did, and they all, you know, they all loved him, but if he did, he would pout. And and then the guy would feel bad, like I shouldn't have beat the little guy. But it was the World Series to Justin in terms of importance. Oh yeah. And so he might ever go sit in a chair and kind of pout, and then the guy'd feel bad. So I went to him and I said, Look, Justin, maybe you're not mature enough because I can't have you do this. I I can't because the guy feels bad and then it kind of screws up the league if you're not, you know, you're gonna have to take your losses. And it's a bar table, one rack of eight ball type of game. So anybody could lose. Well, anyway, I said, So if you can't go and shake the man's hand, then I can't let you play. So he said, okay, okay. And so it was about three weeks later, and I was I was about 20 feet away, kind of administering it, and Justin lost. And I wasn't gonna jump down his throat or anything. I just wanted to see, because you know, he's only 10, 11 years old. And he walked up to the guy, and he like walked up there real stern and he stuck his hand out really firm, okay, like this. The whole time one tear was coming down his face. No, that's how that's how serious he was even back then. It was amazing and astounding. And I'll tell you, he rarely ever lost, even then. Rarely. I've got somehow I had a VHS footage of him running out of rack eight ball. You go pick the best players in the world and get out this rack. And he didn't do it, luckily. He it did it by design, and he was uh it was just incredible. I used to play it at my pool room early on, just like, can you believe this?

Justin Bergman 23:34

That was the greatest league. We had over a hundred teams out of there used to be three locations. Wow this place, uh teachers, which one is still uh still there in Lake St. Louis, but there's one in St. Peter's, one in uh Troy, Illinois, and one in Fairview. And the one in St. Peter's would have like seventy or eighty teams. I think we had like thirty or forty teams and the Fairview one. I don't remember how many in Troy, but uh yeah, that it was a big deal. We won it a couple times and it was like twenty thousand dollars, you know, and I'm ten, eleven, twelve years old and I got four thousand dollars, you know. That was yeah, yeah. That was big money, you know. To a to a kid. It's still it's still a lot of money.

Mike Gonzalez 24:25

Yeah. You must have been having a lot of fun back then.

Justin Bergman 24:29

Oh yeah, yeah. It was a blast. Looking back on it, I think uh Lars is a big reason why I think I improved so much. Because he would get a little better and I'd say, you know, I can't let him beat me. You know, I gotta get better. So we pushed each other. That was good to have, you know, two kids close, you know, and skill level. I think that helped us.

Mark Wilson 24:59

In a in a place, there's normally jealousy or resentment from somebody that gets good, but Justin is the most beloved player in St. Louis that that I've ever seen. And uh to prove it, last week at the Predator Tournament, he had way the biggest following in there. And you could put Gorse playing filler on the table next to him, and it'd be ten people over there, and Justin have 130 people around his. Now 30 of them are family, but nevertheless, it was uh and my wife, she never misses, you know, and and and truly Justin. Do you remember how you're responsible for me having to get married to Kathy? I do.

Justin Bergman 25:35

Tell that's tell that story. Tell it. I w I beat him in a tournament, and is that what it was?

Mark Wilson 25:41

Mark's kind uh I I know the exact story. I always think that you must have been mad at me, but I want to hear Justin's I want to hear Justin's version of Justin.

Justin Bergman 25:50

Let's see how close it is. This is how I remember it. That Mark would always have a dollar entry fee tournament, and he would be staking half the people or all of us, but it was like ten of us, and I never could win. And he said, If you if you win this tournament, then I'm gonna marry Kathy, and I won it like the first time that he said it. That's how I remember it. All right.

Mark Wilson 26:16

Well, here's the story Monday nights, it's a two-dollar entry fee, and I staked everybody. So it's Derek and Dylan, Kathy's two boys, Kathy who wants to get married to me, and then Justin and Lars, and then myself. And I had handicaps. Now, even back then, Justin was really good. So he had to be up there near me, handicap-wise. And you were playing what game? Nine ball, okay, double elimination. And um, so she goes, I want to get married, or however she said it. And I said, Well, babe, I couldn't marry anyone, doesn't have a major title. I mean, there'd be no way. And so uh anyway, Kathy had to make like one ball against Justin. She could I mean she can't even hit the cue ball, you know. So, but if she made one legitimately, now he could run out, so she would mostly lose. And one night, somehow, she got to the finals against Justin. And and she said, ended up making that one ball, and they probably played a race to two or something and beat him two games that way. And then she claimed it as a major title. And I was like, I don't know. I mean But I always think Justin was mad at me and dumped that game, you know. And the But she paid me off. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then we had Lars, and and you know, sometimes he could kind of be like a uh a little trying because he was young and youthful, but he's a real good kid and real bright. So sometimes if he lost, he'd misbehave. So then I installed the coveted Vardiman Award, and and that was for who behaved the worst. And now Justin did win it a couple times later on. He had the coveted Vardman as well as a lot of tournament titles in there. But oh, we had so much fun with the whole thing. Yeah, it was it was good. And then probably, you know, when you have a peer like Lars was for Justin, that there was that, you know, they're both trying to be the best two players in the league, and there was that competition there. And Justin was very serious about his pool game even then. He never horsed around or anything. He was focused. And when we do these training exercises, they would test a pro. And Justin was accomplishing them at a pretty high rate, even back then when he was 11. But yeah, I'll never forget how that tournament went. So you you forgot it. But I'll I gotta live with every day.

Allison Fisher 28:28

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