Chemeketa Voices

Running the Table:
Robin Dreyer

As a teenager, given the choice of doing yard work for $1.50 an hour and playing billiards for 50 cents a game, Chemeketa Community College instructor Robin Dreyer chose the latter.

“On really good days, before I turned 21, I could make $8-$10 an hour at bowling alleys and public recreation centers,” said Dreyer. “Later, I played in bars and pool halls, and it increased my income dramatically.”

Dreyer started playing pool at age 4. While visiting his grandfather in a retirement home they would play pool because it was “the only thing for a kid to do.”

By age 21, Dreyer was making close to $20,000 a year playing pool and using the money to pay his way through college. He would never suggest billiards as a way to make a living, but there were multiple reasons why it worked for him.

“The biggest one was time. Most of the things I could do at that age required daylight, with pool I could go to classes during the day and play at night,” he said.

Dreyer hoped to become a family psychologist, but his experiences growing up in a troubled family made it difficult to let go. Fieldwork in the college program was especially exasperating. When his psychology professor told Dreyer that his empathy for clients would get in the way of a career in the field, he realized he could take what he’d already learned and begin teaching pool.

“Most of the courses I’d taken revolved around skills needed for teaching, and people had been asking me for pool lessons for a long time. It was just sort of the next logical step,” he said.

Dreyer was unsatisfied with the how-to books available at the time, so he drafted an original curriculum for how he would teach beginners to advanced players the sport of pocket billiards. Teaching pool has been his full-time job for more than 20 years.

This spring Dreyer is teaching a billiards class at the Cue Ball in downtown Salem, hoping to instill in others the appreciation and knowledge he has for the game.

“The class is for beginners, who’ve never picked up a stick, to intermediate level players who are looking to hone their skills,” he said.

Dreyer has taught students in wheelchairs, legally blind students, those missing limbs and most other physical challenges people might be faced with. The unique challenges each student requires keep him engaged in teaching.

“One of the best things about pool is that you can have fun at whatever level you’re playing at. You don’t have to be great at it,” he said. “It’s also an indoor sport, which is perfect for Oregon.”

Pool also requires foresight that most other competitive sports aren’t designed for.

Most sports are primarily reactive, while the individual players might visualize their next moves, much of what will happen depends on teammates and opponents. In billiards, the best players might run a table (pocket all the balls) without ever letting their opponents have a shot. It’s more about being able to master’s one’s own demons than dominating a competitor.

That ability, Dreyer said, is directly transferable to real life:

“One of the greatest skills anyone can possess is the discipline to see themselves through the highs, the lows, the frustrations and the setbacks. You have to be able to battle all those demons to play pool well and they’ll make you a winner in life, too.”

By Eric A. Howald. Have a great Chemeketa story? Send us an e-mail.

Updated March 5, 2008 by Marketing and Student Recruitment.