Jay Jamsek has been playing pool since he was 10 years old.
“My dad would take my sisters and me down to the pool hall in Nevada,” Jay said.
Jay grew up in Osceola, and now lives on a farm east of Lincoln, Mo., with spouse Tabetha Jamsek and their younger children. Two weeks ago, the Jamseks bought a 5,400-square-foot building on Price Lane in Clinton, and are in the process of converting it into a family-oriented place to play pool, darts and arcade games. They’ve named it Elite Billiards and Alehouse, and when the interior is complete, Jay will have a place to take his children and introduce them, and a new generation, to the game he loves.
“Pool is coming back,” he said. “New people are starting to get into pool.”
Jay has played in pool leagues for years, he said. A union iron worker for 32 years, he owns Flat Rock Creek Construction, and is using his skills and every spare hour to convert the building on Price Lane into a family recreation center. The Jamseks have ordered 16 new pool tables, they said, which are eight weeks out from being delivered.
Their goal: to provide Clinton with a place that gives pool the respect it deserves, Jay said.
There will also be darts, arcade games for children, TV game nights and a cafe with pizza, sandwiches and nachos. Children will be welcome with their parents until 9 p.m., Jay said. The hall will be non-smoking.
“We’ll have a bar, but we won’t be a bar,” he said.
In the last week, Jay, with the help of friends, gutted the interior of the building, which once housed a church. It’s also been a daycare center and a long time ago, a small skating rink. Jay plans to have new flooring laid, the new walls up and everything painted and back together by the time the tables arrive, he said.
Tabetha said owning a billiards hall is something that Jay had been talking about for several months. Originally from the Creighton area, Tabetha attended Sherwood schools, but has worked for several decades in Clinton. In 2010, she helped open Strike Zone, a bowling alley next to Price Cutter, and said she worked there until it closed in 2017. She also worked for 15 years at a Clinton restaurant.
Despite 20-plus years experience in the hospitality industry, Tabetha said she wasn’t sure at first about the billiards hall idea. Then one day, she woke up and said “Let’s do it.” The Jamseks prayed about the decision to open the facility, she said, and so far, everything has fallen into place. They are aiming for a December 1, 2023 opening.
“This is something I wanted to do for the community,” Jay said. “It’s what I grew up on, and it’s something really cool for my kids to experience.”
Tabetha’s brother, Tim Fields, made a video of the ongoing construction work and posted it on Facebook, where the news got thousands of likes. The response from the community and offers of support have been overwhelming, Jay said. The Jamseks say the location is ideal, next to the senior center, near the ball fields and across from the community center’s inclusive playground.
“There’s lots of drive-by traffic,”Jay said. “People have stopped and asked, “Is this the billiards place?”
Pool is also known as pocket billiards, billiards being the original name of the game.
Jay said he thinks pool is making a comeback because it’s an inexpensive activity to get into, and is a fun, social way to spend an evening with friends. The person who oversees pool leagues in the region told Jay that more than 30 teams were added this year.
He also hopes having a billiards hall for league play and tournaments will encourage people who used to play pool to get their cues out and chalk them up. Pool leagues are already planning to come, Jay said.
“We’re ready to get these doors open,” Tabetha said.
Elite Billiards will also have television screens for game nights, and will live-stream tournament pool games, Jay said. The arcade section for kids will award a free hotdog or other prize for playing. Jay and Tabetha have seven children, five of them grown. They plan to send the two younger ones to Clinton Christian Academy, they said.
Jay said he doesn’t remember the name of the pool hall his father took him to in Nevada, only that it’s not there any more. When he was 13, he got a job at the hall racking up balls, he said, for which he was paid 25 cents a rack, half of the 50 cents it cost to play a game in the 1980s. He could make $5 to $6 an hour, he said, but it wasn’t the money that made the job attractive.
“It was something I wanted to do,” Jay said. “It was somewhere I wanted to be.”
For updates on the opening, go to Elite Billiards and Alehouse, LLC, on Facebook.
