Rakin and Ko New Junior World Billiard Champions Mary Rakin of the United States and Pin Yi Ko of Taipei are the new Junior Champions of the World. They took their titles today in Willingen, Germany at the conclusion of the WPA World Junior Championships for 2007. This is nothing new for Mary Rakin. She won this same event last year, but took the longest road possible to repeat the feat. Coming into the event as the number one seed she dropped her very first match (7-4) to Denise Wilkinson of New Zealand. From there she went on an undefeated romp through the rest of the field. Her second match was nearly the end of her road, but she got by Anja Wagner of Germany (7-6) and then easily took down both Hui Ching Yap of Singapore (7-2) and fellow American Briana Miller (7-2), the 12-year-old wonder with a very big future. This put her into the redraw that signals the start of single-elimination play and her first match there was another close one as she escaped Kristina Schagan of Germany by a single game (9-8). When she then stepped on … [Read more...]