Wiedmer: These girls fight to the end

Millie Prichard's inner voice wouldn’t pipe down.

“One 8-ball shot for $5,000,” it repeated again and again. “One 8-ball shot for FIVE … THOUSAND … DOLLARS.”

This was how it ended a week ago in Las Vegas for Prichard and her seven teammates/soulmates on the Fight Like A Girl pool team from Soddy-Daisy.

If Prichard could deftly drop the famous black ball into the elusive side pocket, they'd win the American Pool Players Association's Ladies 8-Ball Division championship and $10,000.

If her shot failed and her opponent connected, the $10 grand would go to the Don’t Need A Man squad from Clover, S.C., sending Fight Light A Girl home with half that total.

“I'd been down 3-1 in my match and come back to tie it,” recalled Prichard last Thursday from Charlie’s restaurant, the team's home turf for its local league matches. “I felt like I had the 8-ball lined up perfectly.”

They looked like they were all lined up to quickly leave Sin City during their opening match against Nashville. Down 2-0 in the best-3-out-of-5 format, their Las Vegas vacation figured to meet a short, sad end following the longest, saddest summer of their lives.

“My mom passed away on June 3rd, which was the week we were qualifying for nationals,” said team captain Lisa Smith. “I was at the funeral home, but after the girls won they all came to the funeral, which is something I'll never forget.”

The tears were just getting started, though. Exactly seven days after Smith's unexpected loss, Roger Johnson — husband to team member Ena and father to fellow member Amanda — died from a massive heart attack.

And that's where this story probably should have ended. Before it began. Then again, Prichard hadn’t come up with the name Fight Like A Girl for no reason.

Sizing up all that her teammates, soulmates, had overcome — the deaths, more than one bout with breast cancer within the group, growing economic hardships — she could think of no better name. Who could? And by the time they reached Vegas, it even won the event's online poll for best team name.

“There was nothing else to do,” said Myndie Franks of their decision to fight on. “We weren’t going on a vacation; we were going to win it.”

And so it was that the youngest of the group, Amanda Johnson, won her first-round match against Nashville, a victory to spark a late comeback against Music City, which led to similar fairytale finishes against Houston, Dallas, New Orleans and West Monroe, La., to reach the title round.

And with each fresh win the group became more and more convinced that there might be something magical taking place.

“It was like we had angels among us,” said Millie Prichard. “It was as if nothing could go wrong.”

For Smith, Franks and team coach Cheryl Feeney it had ended all wrong each of their previous three trips to the nationals, their team never getting past the fourth round.

Of course, they'd never before gone to Vegas with these exact eight of Jamie Garrett, Martha Prichard, Millie Prichard, the Johnsons, Smith, Feeney and Franks.

“I first started this team in the 1980s — we were the Billiard Babes back then,” said Feeney, who's hung around Chattanooga pool halls since the late 1960s. “It's been on my bucket list for a long time to make the quarterfinals.”

Her initial goals in the sport were far simpler.

“When I was a little girl my grandmother used to take me down to Cherry Street in a big Ford to pick up my uncles and my dad,” recalled Feeney. “Then a few years later I started hanging out at the East Lake Community Center and I would beat the boys and they would start crying and running home. That was such a rewarding feeling I fell in love with the game.”

The APA tournament game involves more strategy than you might think. Every woman carries a handicap based on her ability level. Feeney's is a 6. The highest you can have is a 7, though no one in Chattanooga has reached that ranking. In any given match, the combined numbers of the five players the captain chooses can't exceed 19. The cumulative handicap for the entire Fight Like a Girl squad is 31.

“So you have to decide if you're better off playing your 6 with a 2, a 3 and two 4s,” said Smith, “or play four 4s and a 3. What combination matches up best with your opponent?”

Finally, the opponent was Don't Need A Man — “Only one of them's not married,” laughed Smith — and the difference in victory or defeat hung on Millie Prichard's cue stick.

Yet there was also something vastly different from the first five wins after an opening-round bye. Something eerily absent.

“That feeling that someone was watching over us was gone when we got to the final,” said Smith. “We all felt it it. Something was different.”

Maybe the spirits of Roger Johnson and Smith's mother had been distracted by the slots or a Wayne Newton show. Maybe Don't Need A Man had their own angels. Maybe the yellow T-shirts they'd worn for three straight days — the ones that finished second for best tourney T-shirt design — finally wore out their welcome.

Regardless, despite Franks pulling out her four-leaf clover coin and Smith constantly rubbing her quarters together, Millie Prichard's shot missed.

“The 8-ball nicked the railing,” she said, her voice cracking. “I missed a $5,000 shot.”

Or you could argue that by fighting like girls they won $5,000, which breaks down to $625 each.

“I bought this watch,” said Smith, holding up the glittering timepiece hugging her left wrist.

Added Millie’s daughter Martha, “I’m using mine for my car payments.”

Said Millie, careful to note she’s not one of the three grandmothers on a team whose average age is 42, “I’ve bought some presents for kids — not my grandkids.”

You can say it should have ended differently, and Prichard has lost much sleep that it didn't.

But Franks disagrees.

“If we’d won it all this time,” she said, putting her hand on Millie Prichard’s shoulder, “what would we be able to go to Vegas and play for next year?”