European A Team wins Team Cup

European Team Member Karen Corr

With a win over The Asian B Team of Francisco Bustamante, Ga Young Kim, Shin Young Park, Makiki Takage and Akikumo Toshikawa in the finals, the European A Team of Thorsten Hohmann, Karen Corr, Oliver Ortmann, Sandra Ortner and Tom Storm has won the 2003 Rockport World Pool-Billiard Continental Team Cup.

During the closing ceremony, team Captain Oliver Ortmann expressed his thanks to his entire team and a special thanks to Karen Corr who was having problems with her eyes during the event but still gave it her all.

With the crowd seemingly equally split between Filipino and Taiwanese fans, everyone was pleased at the end of the event when the promoter invited the team of Francisco Bustamante and Efren Reyes to take on Fong Pang Chao and Ching-Shun Yang in an exhibition match. Although Bustamante and Reyes had not played as a team before, they won the match 11-5.

Yang commented after the match how nervous he was playing alongside his mentor Chao, and playing against two of his favorite players.

The European A Team pocketed $35,000 while the Asian B Team settled for $17,000. The European B team of Ralf Souquet, Franziska Stark, Mika Immonen, Nik Bergendorff and Julie Kelly ended up tied for third place with the Chinese Taipei A of Hui-kai Hsia, Shin-mei Liu, Pei-wei Chang, Jui-fang Fan and Kun-fang Lee. Both teams pocketed $10,000 for third place.