Tosado Takes First Tri-State Victory

The young Michael Tosado had o­ne thing o­n his mind when he came to the Tri-State Tour's event at Amsterdam Billiards o­n August 8-9, 2004, and that was winning.  Even though the beginning of school is just around the corner for the 13 year old, it was far from his mind as his intense focus allowed him to best a field of 38 "C" and "D" players to take his first win o­n the tour. 

With his father looking o­n as always and taking notes of the matches for later study, Tosado played like a seasoned player, defeating all of his opponents.  The likes of Dave Shlemperis, Cyndi Haefner, Dmitri Rozenfeld, invitational champion Ryan Bandoy, Jacob Schwartz, and Brenda Heras all fell to the young player.

Heras, an upcoming female player, also played very well all weekend with wins over Alan Chan, Chalmers Kimmons, and David Hunter before losing to Jacob Schwartz and being sent to the o­ne loss side. She again picked up her winning ways and bested Bob Riley and Randy Mackin to give her a rematch against Schwartz. This time she took no chances and won decidedly and went o­n to the finals.

Appearing to be o­n his way to another crushing victory, Tosado went out ahead of Heras 5-1 before his nerves finally set in. Heras then capitalized o­n every opportunity and brought the set up to 5-4 before missing a 6 ball in the corner. Tosado stepped up to the table with four balls left and played the first two balls perfectly, but he put a little too much English o­n his shot at the 8 and brought the cue ball back by the 9, leaving no pocket for it except a very hard cross-side bank shot. After studying the shot, Tosado shot the bank and missed the cross side pocket.  Thinking it was all over for him, Tosado was surprised to see the 9 have just enough speed to keep rolling to make the double bank into the other side pocket for the win.

Results:
1st Michael Tosado
2nd Brenda Heras
3rd Jacob Schwartz
4th Randy Mackin
5th Bob Riley, Ryan Bandoy
7th Anthony Diorio, Daniel Kramer
9th Dmitri Rozenfeld, Chalmers Kimmons, David Hunter, Alejandro Molina

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