| Born | 30 January 1965 [1] San Antonio, Texas, United States |
|---|---|
| Sport country |  United States |
| Nickname | The Texas Tornado |
| Professional | 1987 |
| Pool games | 8-Ball, Nine-Ball, Ten-ball |
Vivian Villarreal (born 30 January 1965) is an American former professional pool player. She was the World Pool-Billiard Association world number one women's player for five years, and has twice been runner up in the WPA World Nine-ball Championship.
Villarreal's grandmother, Amalia Huerta, was the owner of Mollie's Lounge, a restaurant and bar with a pool table, in San Antonio. Villarreal sometimes helped with cleaning and became interested in pool. She started to play at the age of 8, and by the time she was 11, had accumulated 161 trophies. [2] [3]
She gave up playing pool for about 10 years from the age of 14 to focus on her studies. Villarreal graduated from Lee High School, and went on to study computer science, book-keeping and accounting at San Antonio College. [1]
Villarreal started playing again, and participated in the Women's Professional Billiard Association circuit in 1992, winning her first title at the Wahine Open in Hilo, Hawaii her first year. [4] She won several more titles over the following years and in 1996 won the ESPN World Open 9-Ball Championship. [2]
In 1992, she was runner-up in WPA World Nine-ball championship, losing to Franziska Stark, and in 1996 was beaten in the final of the competition by Gerda Hofstatter.
She is known as "The Texas Tornado" for her rapid and demonstrative style of play. [5] [6]
The Women's Professional Billiard Association inducted Villarreal to its Hall of Fame in 2015. [4]
She adopted a child in 1992, but the child was taken away by her biological mother in 1997 following a court-approved visitation. Villarreal spent some eight years searching for the child, who was finally discovered to be in Arkansas. Villarreal subsequently agreed that the child could choose where to stay, and the child continued to live with her biological mother whilst maintaining contact with Villarreal. [7] [5]
Villareal is the founder of The Tornado Foundation, which has a broad mission to help "any child, animal or victim in need of assistance" [8] and organises a pool event called The Tornado Open [9] to benefit the Foundation.
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