Every other week the pool tables at the Grizz Den are reserved for Grizz Balls, Oakland University’s pool club. However, they remain open to anyone who wants to be part of one of the largest and most visible communities at OU.
Hosting bi-weekly tournaments, Grizz Balls has created a staple competition among casual and competitive pool players from across campus. On Jan. 31, they hosted the first tournament of the semester, disregarding snowstorms and tight schedules.
“We had kind of a small turnout, but we’ve been recently experimenting with double-elimination tournaments, so we’re able to extend it and get a lot more matches out of it,” Simon Roeser, Grizz Balls vice president, said. “If you lose your first match, you go down to a lower bracket, and you have the opportunity to work your way through it. If you win the lower bracket, you go all the way back up to the championship.”
10 people participated in the double-elimination tournament, competing in an eight-ball game in which participants versed each other one on one, calling the shots within 45 seconds to win two out of three rounds.
“It’s the winter semester, you know, so things are typically a little slower and whatnot,” Brendley Carey, Grizz Balls president, said. “But, as usual, Grizz Balls is here trying to have an event for the people, trying to give the people something nice and fun to enjoy their time outside of class.”
This was one of the longest tournaments the E-Board recalls having, the first double-elimination of the semester ended around 10:30 p.m., lasting a few minutes short of five hours. The final standoff was between Simon Roeser and Joshua Dubach — long-time friends and pool enthusiasts.
“I took round one, went into round two and I lost there — got moved to the losers bracket,” Dubach said, retelling his underdog odyssey through the brackets. “I had to take two games there to get out of the losers bracket, back into my shot at the grand finale. So I had to play the grand final twice to get completely out.”
Winning four consecutive rounds against Roeser, Dubach won first place during the first and longest contest of the semester.
“I came down here last semester, first day of classes I was like, ‘You know, that’s pretty cool.’ So, just kept doing it, and now here we are winning tournaments,” Dubach said. “I did skip work tonight to be here so I’m glad I won something.”
Beyond sharing a passion and fine tuning their competitive edge, Grizz Balls has become a project to consolidate a community at the heart of OU.
“I used to come down here with my friends all the time, and then I made some other friends, but I noticed that different friends were in different groups,” Carey said. “That’s really the main thing that sparked the club, I’m like, ‘Why not get everybody to know everybody and whatnot?’”
Thus, most of the regular pool players or people who generally hang out at The Den are part of Grizz Balls, either as referees, members or spectators. One can find Grizz Balls members just about every hour of every day, Carey explained.
“I agree with that because you can come down here any day of the week on each day and you can get a different group of people that are still part of the club,” Roeser said. “One thing that definitely helps is it’s right in the heart of the OC.”
By word of mouth or an invitation to join a pool game, Roeser explained that the Grizz Balls community has been able to grow rapidly.
“If anyone stops down here and they’re like, ‘Oh, cool, you know, I’ll play a couple of games,’ they’re bound to meet some people in our org, become friends,” Roeser said. “It just keeps on growing and so I think that’s what’s made the difference, we just have this area where we’re able to hang out all the time every single day of the week.”
