Parker went from the “Battling Beauty” to “Morah JoAnn,” Hebrew for teacher. The motto of the Modern Orthodox school: “Where excellence in Torah and general studies is our passion.” Lesser known was her second calling: For 12 years, Parker taught pre-kindergarten at Katz Hillel Day School in Boca Raton, Florida, which her son William attended. She was the New York State billiards champion for six years running.Īnd all that was only her first career. Open, the most competitive event in the country, beating the No.
She won the McDermott Masters in 1988 and two years later, in 1990, the U.S. While still a teenager, Parker went pro, joining the Women’s Professional Billiards Tour after high school. She started playing on the amateur circuit as a kid and won her first major tournament, the “Big Apple” Amateur 8-Ball title, at 13. Parker, who went on to become known as the “Battling Beauty” in professional billiards, earned her reputation as a prodigy around the time she sank all those balls in Amsterdam. JoAnn Mason Parker at a 1992 exhibition in New York City, with her husband, Robert Parker, clapping with Mayor Ed Koch and other members of the Friars Club. When the girls kept returning to their parents for more quarters, their father asked what was going on: “JoAnn just keeps making all the balls in the hole!” Nancy said to his astonishment. She could barely reach the table, so she shot sidearm. She and her older sister, Nancy, were given quarters to keep them occupied. Parker’s parents, both from the Bronx , in those days ventured upstate for fishing, horse racing and billiards each summer with the family. It was on a bar-size table at a pool hall in Amsterdam, New York. At the age of 5, she said, she ran her first rack of balls (meaning, pocketed each one without missing).
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Then you’ll know how to do this one day.”Īnd she had obvious natural gifts. Harvey would often tell her, “Don’t watch the balls, JoAnn, watch me,” Parker said.
While watching him play, she would get some early coaching. “I was a daddy’s girl right from the start.” “When I was 4 years old I always copied whatever my dad was doing,” she said.
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She emulated and learned from her father, Harvey Mason, a pro player and coach who trained the likes of Tony Robles (“ The Silent Assassin”) and Sammy Guzman. She’s been playing in (and winning) amateur tournaments in New York, working out and envisioning a return to competition at the highest level.Ī natural athlete (Parker ran track and played volleyball, softball and, later in life, golf), she gravitated toward billiards at a very early age. Today, 26 years after retiring from the pro circuit, Parker, 53, is eyeing a comeback. “When I saw what they stand for, I felt like I wanted to be a part of it,” Parker said.
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