Love of billiards becomes a family legacy.
LOCKESBURG, Ark. – Jim Lawrence found a hobby he loved at 13 and over 50-plus years it has become a family legacy.
Lawrence, known to his friends and fellow billiard players as Bobcat, first started playing pool when he was 13 years old and growing up in Mena, Ark., when his parents put in a couple of pool tables in a cafe they owned.
“There was a man who owned a service station and would come up there and eat all the time,” Bobcat said. “He’s the one who started giving me tips and showing me how to play. I’ve skipped a few years, here and there, but have been playing pretty steady since then.”
Bobcat, now 64, taught his sons, Jimmy and Jason, the game, as well as his grandson Skylar, 16. He plays in the Twin Cities BCA Pool League on a team with his niece, Crystal Boarman, and Bobcat and Crystal are regulars in doubles tournaments in and around the Texarkana area.
The team Bobcat and Crystal play with won the last league session. Bobcat, a soft spoken player who plays at a high level from under his signature khaki Razorbacks hat, was also a finalist in the 2019 Texarkana 8-Ball City Pool Tournament last July.
“Jimmy and Jason have been playing ever since they were big enough to look over the table,” Bobcat said. “Crystal used to come over and play all the time when she was a kid, and Skylar has been playing since he was a little fella. I got a table at home that all of them learned to play on. We all love to play, and we get together all the time to play together.”
Skylar Lawrence has taken his granddad’s lessons and could be seen as a bit of a prodigy, having crafted his game to best players with years more experience.
“I just hope I’m getting around good when Skylar gets old enough to go places; since he’s just 16 he can’t get in many places to shoot,” Bobcat said. “He’s champing at the bit to do it now.
“For a long time, he would get so mad that he would think that he would have me (beat), and now he gets me just as much as I get him.”
For years Bobcat would play in various pool tournaments all around Southwest Arkansas.
“I always like to go somewhere and play someone I haven’t played before,” he said.
Bobcat took a little break from billiards for a while but got back into the game a few years back when a
“I got a table at home that all of them learned to play on. We all love to play, and we get together all the time to play together.”
—Jim “Bobcat” Lawrence
co-worker invited him to a pool tournament near Nashville, Ark.
“Jimmy and I went to play in that tournament, and I think I won the first one I played,” Bobcat laughed. “That got me back into it then. I had just been playing around the house for years and didn’t know where to go play or anything.
“I liked to say that my retirement plan was to have everything paid off in my early 60s, so I could hunt and play pool,” Bobcat smiled. “It’s working out pretty well so far.”