Rubilen Amit is a new star of Pinoy pool. Today, as the Philippne’s first female world pool champion, it’s become apparent that her careful deliberation has its own advantages.
“I may have doubted it in the past, because I’m really a worrier, but now everything’s clear to me. This is what I want to do,” says Rubilen, the latest toast in Philippine sports since she captured the prestigious title in the World Women’s 10-Ball Championships in June in Manila.
The view from the top is not exactly new for the 27-year-old. Seven years ago, this diminutive cue artist ruled the region by winning the title in the 2002 Asian 8-Ball Championships in Singapore on her international debut.
But that first overseas victory didn’t seem to be the affirmation she was seeking.
Although widely considered as the next sensation in billiards, Rubilen decided to walk away from the scene the following year and turned her attention to the family business. She later worked in a call center. “I just tried it out,” she says of her call center stint. “It’s good to have some money of my own. There are less opportunities in women’s billiards so I thought about my future and decided to work.”
It wasn’t the first time that Rubilen took a break from the sport she had learned at 12. While most talented teen athletes aggressively chase after their ambitions, she opted to put her cue stick aside to focus on her accountancy course at the University of Santo Tomas.
Though a quitter she’s not, Rubilen points out, in a sport dominated by men, reality can sometimes dampen an athlete’s enthusiasm. In smoke-filled testosterone-charged billiards halls, it isn’t easy for female pool players to prevail.
“When I started out, I didn’t see billiards as a career,” the Cebu-born athlete admits. “I decided to stop because I didn’t see any future in the sport. If you really want to play, you had to be sure you have enough money to fall back on.”
That thought propelled her into a call center job for a year, followed by a sports bar venture and an almost-plunge into the corporate world. “My first dream was to become a CPA [certified public accountant]-lawyer and to go the corporate route. But I know the fulfillment wouldn’t be there,” she says.
The call center stint was fun, she adds, as it gave her a chance to encounter different personalities. “I was placed on the day shift and I was answering e-mail for an American client,” recalls Rubilen. Then she heard talks about the possibility of having a women’s division for the SEA Games. “I thought to myself, if the opportunity comes along, I’d readily resign and play billiards again.”
She eventually quit her call center job after making it to the national team, and easily clinched two gold medals in the 8-ball and 9-ball competitions of the 2005 Southeast Asian Games.
Still, that nebulous fear dogged her and sidetracked her anew.
“I have several goals in life, and one of them is to have a bar,” Rubilen shares of the sports bar she started with some friends. “It sounded exciting, but I realized later that it’s not really my passion. I drink occasionally but don’t go out on gimmicks that much. Eventually it started to sink in that it’s really billiards for me.”
But she admits that she wanted things to be clearly spelled out. “I asked for signs. I believe in signs,” she says.
She got one during the 2007 Amway Women’s World 9-Ball Championships in Taipei.
“I was praying so hard. I was asking for guidance,” Rubilen recounts. “I was asking God. ‘Please give me a sign if this is going to be my career path.’ Then I placed second. To me the message was: ‘This is your career path, but I won’t give you everything. It’s only second, so you’ll have to work hard for it.’ That was how I took it. I was really happy winning second. People wondered why I wasn’t even disappointed when I only got second. But for me, it was more than enough.”
In 2007, Rubilen also defended her 9-ball title in the Southeast Asian Games in Thailand and settled for a bronze in the 8-ball event. An inspirational book further validated her decision and sharpened her focus. “The book says that you should stick to your master talent. It says you have to evaluate and analyze your master talent – what it is you want –
and at the same time, what it is you can learn easily. It’s a God-given talent and in a way God has motivated me to develop it.”
That would have sealed off all her doubts about pursuing billiards, except that it came at a time when her family had to weather a financial crisis. “We’ve been going through rough times,” she says, adding that her family’s two business ventures had failed.
“Life was comfortable in Cebu,” she says. “When we came to Manila [in the early ’90s], we also had an easy time until our cargo forwarding business stopped operations in 2006. Then we ventured into a food business, but found it hard going as well. So we closed that too. We had to make a lot of sacrifices after that.”
Her father Roberto took a part-time job as a transcriptionist, says Rubilen, while her mother remains a full time homemaker. Her 19-year-old brother RJ continued with his Psychology course at De La Salle University.
Her family managed somehow, but things took a turn for the worse when Rubilen was booted out of the national team because of the internal rift among the officials and athletes of the Billiards and Snookers Congress of the Philippines.
“I was the breadwinner,” she says. “My income was solely from the government. Then it stopped coming. So it was really hard. I talked to my family. I told my brother that I might not be able to sustain his schooling. And he understood. This semester he was supposed to file a leave of absence and go to work to help the family.”
Unlike in years past, however, Rubilen soldiered on.
She shares: “I talked to my family and told them that this is where I find fulfillment. And they understood. That’s when I really focused on the game. I decided that this was going to be my career path.”
Her commitment paid off. Not only did Rubilen make history as the first Filipina to capture a world pool championship, but she also earned a whopping $20,000 grand prize.
“It’s a blessing,” she says after disposing of two-time world titlist Liu Shin Mei of Taipei in the finals and other top contenders in the early rounds, including the famous Jeanette “The Black Widow” Lee of the United States.
“Everything that’s happening is a blessing. For the family, it’s a relief. It’s a big help.”
But the relief is more evident in Rubilen as she revels in the accolades and the flurry of media interviews and photo shoots in the weeks that followed. “I gave myself a few days of rest just to savor the moment, to enjoy everything that’s been happening,” she says.
Still, she remains cautious in proclaiming herself the face of Philippine women’s billiards. In fact, she’s humbled every time someone notes how her historic feat has placed her in the same league as Filipino pool icons Efren “Bata” Reyes, Django Bustamante, Alex Pagulayan and Ronnie Alcano.
“I respect them, they’re up there,” says this champ. “But I also hope that we Filipinas can reach that level and give honor to the country.”
And with all financial worries lifted off her barely five-foot frame, a relaxed Rubilen now feels more ambitious.
“I really want to go to the US just to play and try out the US circuit,” she says. “I also visualize playing in the Olympics. They say if you visualize it, you can attract it. So maybe it will manifest. But aside from that, since billiards is not part of the Olympics yet, my main focus now is just to show my game at every tournament. That’s my main goal, but if I get lucky and win a tournament, it’s a bonus.”
Her current success also made her put all the past miscues in perspective. “It’s funny how God’s plan works. Sometimes you have doubts, but how could I have doubted Him?” She adds: “Everything that happened – all the sacrifices, the hard work, everything I’ve been through – made the victory even sweeter. Yun lang pala yun [so that’s what it was all about]. He just wanted things to be sweeter for me.”