Kletus Rack Room offering free billiards classes for children

By BRITTANY FHOLER 
Cove Leader-Press 

Kids ages 8 to 17-years-old are invited to participate in a free youth billiards clinic every Saturday at Kletus Rack Room, located at 314 Cove Terrace Shopping Center. 
The lessons are free and last from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The first day of instruction was Saturday and saw at least four students participating, including Jasmyne, 14, and Olivia Tenpenny, 8, and Jacobi Weathersby, 14. 
Erica Tenpenny brought her nephew Jacobi and her daughters, Jasmyne and Olivia, to the first lesson Saturday. Tenpenny said she had just moved to Texas last August and was looking for summer activities for the kids to do. 
“I love it,” Tenpenny said about the lesson she had observed so far. She added that she was learning from the instructor herself.  
She added that she had driven past Kletus Rack Room previously but never stopped in. That would be changing, she said. 
“This is a place I wouldn’t mind coming to, me and my husband, coming to and just checking it out on our own without the kids,” Tenpenny said. 
Instructor Alexis Reynolds handed each student a sheet with pool-related terms and definitions and introduced them to a pool stick, pool table and the different balls. 
As she showed them how to rack the balls and set up the cue ball, she explained each step before offering the students each a chance to set it up themselves. 
Reynolds has been playing pool since her father taught her when she was eight years old and met Richard “Kletus” Session, the owner of Kletus Rack Room approximately three years ago. Reynolds has experience coaching basketball for 20 years, mainly as a volunteer, which she said ties into what she likes best, which is helping kids. 
“This is a sport in itself,” Reynolds said about pool. “Just not something that requires everybody to go running around and you know, but it’s a workout.”
Pool is an outlet for the kids who maybe don’t play sports or who are looking for a new skill to master, she added. 
“It’s a good feeling when you make a ball in,” Reynolds said. 
The game also acts as challenge of a person’s character, she added. 
“Are you just going to walk away because you didn’t figure it out today or are you going to come back and try again?” Reynolds asked. “That says a lot about who you are. Just like sports and the discipline and direction, this type of game does the same thing so it’s a good way for kids learn a different angle of life.”
The idea for offering a clinic for kids to learn how to play has been something Session has been looking to do for a while. 
“We want to get the kids more involved in different things,” said Session. 
The classes help show that pool is not just a game for adults, Session added. 
“Mainly, it’s to give kids a new place to come and socialize that’s safe, off the streets, especially in kind of the world we’re living in today, and something new, something to give them a new skill to take home,” Reynolds said. 
Through the lessons, Reynolds breaks everything about the game down in group instruction before splitting the kids up and letting them practice individually and as teams. 
The goal by the end of the summer is to advance the students enough to be able to call and make their own shots. 
Classes are free and enrollment is still open. The classes are every Saturday until August 17, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Kletus Rack Room. To enroll, call Reynolds at (254) 661-2589 or stop by Kletus Rack Room during their regular business hours- Mondays and Wednesdays beginning at 5 p.m. and Thursday, Friday and Saturday beginning at 6 p.m.