TAMPA, Fla. \u2014\u00a0When Victoria Parker first took up the game of pool, it was purely for social reasons, but two years ago, something changed. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The Hudson High School grad was bitten by the pool bug and started playing every day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just loved the mental game,” Parker said. “Because you have to have such mental fortitude in order to play.”<\/p>\n
She joined multiple amateur leagues and started playing five hours a night, seven days a week and earlier this year all the hard work paid off.<\/p>\n
In April, Victoria went to Las Vegas to compete in the American Poll Associations 8-ball tournament and made it all the way to the Championship Match at her level.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got goosebumps the morning of the finals,” she said.<\/p>\n
By the time the event was over, the 26-year-old healthcare structural designer had won a national championship and a $15,000 first prize check in her first major tournament as an amateur.<\/p>\n
After three days of playing and spending more than 10 hours a day on her feet, grinding out the win was about more than just a winner\u2019s check.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of it, I proved something to myself,” Parker said. “That I can do hard things and I think going forward, I will always remember that I can do hard things and there\u2019s nothing stopping me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014\u00a0When Victoria Parker first took up the game of pool, it was purely for social reasons,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1238,1236,276,128567,115,110,1237,135,137,136,835],"class_list":["post-307864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-sports","tag-florida-sports","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-mike-cairns","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}