GARNER -- At 27, Seth Coats had never flown on an airplane, never wandered any farther than Atlanta, and, after a terrible car crash broke both legs in 2008, his biggest thrill came from shooting 9-ball on Tuesday nights.
Coats never expected much beyond good times from nights at Carolina Billiards, a six-table bar in Garner with "No Bare Feet" painted on the front and a coin-operated laundry next door.
But last month, he and his team, the Landsharks, shot their way to Las Vegas and a national tournament, snagging third place at the Riviera Hotel & Casino.
"From little old Garner," he gushed, pointing at the plaque on the coffee table of his Clayton home. "I'm proud of that right there."
The adventure still makes Coats stop and rub his eyes, wondering how it happened.
Two years ago, his legs were broken in 10 places, requiring seven surgeries, titanium rods and months of rehabilitation. Unable to work at his construction manager job, he stewed in a wheelchair and got serious about 9-ball.
"When I was in a wheelchair, I shot good," he said. "I could look straight across the table."
Making it all the way to the APA National Team Championships from Carolina Billiards isn't too peculiar. Owner John McLaughlin took his own team there last year, taking home 18th place. Not everybody gets rattled upgrading from a strip-mall billiard parlor with six tables to a casino floor covered in a sea of 500.
"It speaks well of this little bar," he said, mulling the Landsharks' win. "That's the furthest anybody from this area has gotten in the history of the deal."
The Landsharks made it out of the Triangle on a crooked path, not because they won every game, but because they fought their way out of a best-of-the-rest pack.
In Las Vegas, too, they didn't always win. But two teams that beat them got caught "sand-bagging," or downplaying their own ability in order to play less-skilled opponents.
Coats himself admits his game was better when he was shooting from the chair, and with a lower handicap, he had to make fewer shots.
But after his first airplane trip, watching the fountains at the Bellagio Hotel, and walking free of his wheelchair down the Strip, Coats figured he was a winner no matter what happened. But he'll never forget his biggest moment for the Landsharks: sinking the last shot in a do-or-die game despite miscuing and missing a scratch only because the cue ball bounced back out of the side pocket.
"It is what it is," he smiled. "It didn't even mean anything until I got home."
After two years, he's drawing disability for his injury. He'd rather work full time, but he knows there isn't any shame. He goes back to Carolina Billiards on Tuesdays, thinks about his next shot and hopes it rolls in.
