{"id":242029,"date":"2022-11-04T12:18:43","date_gmt":"2022-11-04T10:18:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/Lavender-Hill-pool-player-gives-it-stick\/"},"modified":"2022-11-04T12:18:43","modified_gmt":"2022-11-04T10:18:43","slug":"lavender-hill-pool-player-gives-it-stick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/lavender-hill-pool-player-gives-it-stick\/","title":{"rendered":"Lavender Hill pool player gives it stick"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Ashraf%20Hendricks\/poolplayer-20221102-ew3a2940hr.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/lavender-hill-pool-player-gives-it-stick.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">21-year-old Shaiyene Fritz started playing pool at the age of nine. She was part of a team that won gold at the 2022 World Blackball Championships in Morocco. Photos: Ashraf Hendricks<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">Shaiyene Fritz has just returned from Morocco, where she competed in the World Blackball Championships.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">South Africa won gold medals in a number of events, including the women\u2019s team category.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">Fritz is studying to be a social worker, but plans to keep playing pool.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>She dreams of becoming a social worker, but 21-year-old Shaiyene Fritz\u2019s love for pool has taken her to the world championships.<\/p>\n<p>Hailing from Lavender Hill, Fritz was part of a team that brought back trophies and medals from the 2022 World Blackball Championships in Morocco, held last month. South African won 32 medals at the event, including victories for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebulrushes.com\/2022\/10\/21\/soweto-pool-ace-beatrice-monyake-is-new-world-blackball-champion\/\">Beatrice Monyake<\/a> in the women\u2019s singles event and Senzo Gumede in the men\u2019s singles event.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy passion and knowledge for pool started when I was nine years old, where I would play at the local game shop. We would even have tournaments against each other at the shop. I basically taught myself how to play.\u201d<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/lavender-hill-pool-player-gives-it-stick.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI practised a lot. Through the years and getting recognised for my skills, I joined a pool club where I met different people who were professional pool players,\u201d said Fritz.<\/p>\n<p>As she got better, Fritz said she realised that she could play pool professionally. And although her mother was sceptical, she did all she could to support her daughter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe would make a way even though she was an unemployed single mother. But she made it clear to me from the beginning, that I couldn\u2019t play pool if I can\u2019t keep my academics up,\u201d said Fritz.<\/p>\n<p>She said she got the opportunity to play in the world championships in Morocco after finishing ninth place out of about 90 people at the national championships hosted by Blackball South Africa in Johannesburg in May.<\/p>\n<p>Fritz said it was a struggle raising money to attend the world championships, but through fundraising efforts and doing interviews on television, she received overwhelming support.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBeing at the championships was a roller-coaster. We went as singles, and we were never supposed to play team events.\u201d South Africa\u2019s two women\u2019s teams took first and second place.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was an awesome moment. And we were all women. The team spirit was amazing, we encouraged each other every day,\u201d said Fritz.<\/p>\n<p>Fritz is in her second year of a social work degree at Stellenbosch University. She said she decided to study social work because she saw a need in her community.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy upbringing was not great. I know what it feels like to go to bed hungry. But through perseverance and having support from my counsellor at school, I persevered.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her plans for the future include playing in bigger tournaments and finishing her studies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would definitely recommend playing pool, especially at a young age because it teaches discipline and strategy, and it can take you places,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Ashraf%20Hendricks\/poolplayer-20221102-ew3a2918hr.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/lavender-hill-pool-player-gives-it-stick-1.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Born in Lavender Hill, Shaiyene Fritz sold boerewors rolls and raffle tickets to raise money to attend tournaments.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/lavender-hill-pool-player-gives-it-stick.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>21-year-old Shaiyene Fritz started playing pool at the age of nine. She was part of a team that won gold at the 2022 World Blackball Championships in Morocco. Photos: Ashraf Hendricks Shaiyene Fritz has just returned from Morocco, where she competed in the World Blackball Championships. South Africa won gold medals in a number of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":242030,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-242029","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/lavender-hill-pool-player-gives-it-stick.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}