Billiards champion Bill Gibbons has been playing pool since he was a teenager.
“When I was 16, I played against the best players,” Gibbons recently recalled. “It was one way to spend some leisure time and stay out of trouble.”
Now, more than 50 years later, Gibbons will re-live that experience from the other side of the table and share his knowledge of the game with youth as part of a unique program designed to bridge the generation gap between Cochrane’s young and old.
“A lot of youth don’t have grandparents that live nearby, or maybe their grandparents have passed away,” said Shannon Bannister, the town’s seniors’ programmer. “Having that influence of seniors in their lives really helps them to have more of an understanding of the generations. It also helps our members to understand youth a little bit more.
“I think that they see each other more as people.”
For a few days each year, about a dozen St. Timothy High School students trade in their teachers for seniors so they can learn from the elder statesmen and women in the community.
Classes begin Oct. 17 at Seniors on the Bow Centre and run twice a week for six weeks. Youth will learn how to carpet bowl and floor curl, and seniors and teens will bake cookies to share with visitors.
For the first time, Gibbons will also teach billiards. Bannister said she got the idea to include him in this year’s intergenerational programming since he often helps his peers at the centre with the ins and outs of the game.
“I just thought it would be wonderful if he would do the same for the youth,” she said.
Gibbons recently returned from participating in his third Canada 55+ Games, where he pocketed a bronze medal in 8 Ball. The former Canada Post employee plays in four leagues – including the Cochrane Pool League – and estimates he sinks about 30,000 balls annually.
He has also competed across Canada and the U.S., and in the winter, he shoots pool in Palm Springs, California, with many of North America’s top-ranked players.
Gibbons hopes his small bit of teaching provides an opportunity for the teens to fall in love with the same game he did at about the same age.
“We’ll go over the fundamentals and teach them the things that make a difference in a short span,” he said. “I love the game and I love the people that are involved in it.”
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