A quest by the ‘men beaters’ — a group of six Jamaican women pool players — to showcase their prowess against a team from Barbados at the end of May is under threat due to a lack of funding.

While women in Jamaica aren’t always given the recognition they deserve in pool and some other sporting disciplines, the members of the Jamaica Female Pool Players team are confident that with good support, they can help to bring more fame and overseas earnings to Jamaica.

On May 27 to 29, Barbados will host the Kaleido Cup Caribbean Female Team Challenge at the Cave Hill campus of The University of the West Indies. The tournament will be exclusively between Jamaica and a female team from Barbados.

Ann-Marie Brown, one of the local players, said the team is determined to get recognition at the global level.

“We want the recognition for our team. Other sports are being recognised. We want to be able to say we produce quality from Jamaica and we can go overseas, make some money for the country and make females become more recognised. Not only men can do big things for the country, we can do it too,” she said with a smile.

According to Chrisanne Otto, who is another experienced member of the team, investing in the ladies would help Jamaica stamp its name in one more field on the global stage.

In a bid to impress potential sponsors, Whitney Tracey said the women deserve the support because in many cases, they are able to triumph over men who are very experienced at pool.

“We play many competitions and we play with males most of the times and we beat them. They call us the men beaters. That is one of the reasons we deserve the support to travel to Barbados. We will definitely do very well and make our country proud.

“We are not well recognised in Jamaica and other places and that needs to change. When I walk with my pool case, some men would look and say ‘really? I didn’t know females play pool’, but there are a lot of us and we deserve recognition too.”

Though Lauren Dash isn’t the team captain, everyone agrees she is the most experienced of the lot. According to Dash, the team from Barbados is determined to seek revenge on Jamaica, after she destroyed her Bajan opponents in a singles tournament in 2019.

“There was an event in 2019 called Queen of the Green. It was hosted by Barbados and it was an individual event. We had ladies who travelled there and we all participated. I was the winner and we were able to bring the title home to Jamaica. The Bajan females were immediately ready for a fight back and so this competition is part of their response to try and bring that title back home. They decided they would create another event where a team of Jamaican ladies will play against their team.

“The two teams will play and whoever wins this leg gets bragging rights for one year and then the following year there is a return leg. They then would come here the following year for the return leg. The team is a new team [that] was formed this year. We had a qualification event where we chose the ladies to be on the team. At the moment, we are in great need of financial support.

“We have started doing fund-raisers and other little things to help with finances. It is a decent chuck of money for the team of six travelling and possibly with two officials. We are going to need at least US$12,000 to cover everything comfortably. We have a winning team. All these ladies have won their various titles in their own rights and kudos to them for making it to this point and I think that it is worth the investment to push the ladies. The ladies usually don’t get much recognition in a male-dominated sport and so in this case, it is a good step for us to get that recognition to push further than just the bounds of Jamaica.”

Dash shared that part of their effort to raise funds is a raffle. She also provided contact information so people can assist the women achieve fame for their country in pool.

“People can contact me at ja.poolleague@gmail.com or you can contact the Pool Association at poolplayersjamaica@gmail.com.

“My contact number is 876-816-5192. We are having a fund-raiser raffle to help raise funds to assist us with travelling. The tickets cost $250 and we have a whole host of prizes to be won, ranging from a weekend for two at a hotel, dinner for two, gas vouchers and different kinds of things that can be won. A lot [of] people will have a lot of chances to win something while we also get funds to assist with travelling to Barbados.”