Pool hall junkie: Steve Markle, a 2010 Archbishop Ryan grad, is making waves as the sixth-ranked trick-shot pool player in the country. MARIA POUCHNIKOVA / TIMES PHOTO
For most people, playing pool doesn’t venture far beyond horsing around in dimly-lit dive bars and smoke-filled taprooms.
Steve Markle is not most people.
Markle is a 2010 graduate of Archbishop Ryan and former All-Catholic baseball player at the school. Currently a senior at West Chester University studying criminal justice, Markle, a Bensalem native, seems like a lot of normal 22-year-olds on the surface.
Then he starts telling stories. Stories of being a nationally-ranked trick-shot pool player.
He’s been hired by Hewlett-Packard to perform in a $22 million mountaintop mansion in Utah following the Sundance Film Festival. Markle has flown to China, where natives clamored for his picture. His skills, which he began honing when he was just 13, have taken him coast to coast, from the bright lights of Las Vegas to the Deep South of Tunica, Mississippi to in front of ESPN cameras as a member of Team USA in the World Cup of Trick Shots tournament.
Markle is a YouTube sensation, with his plethora of videos tallying a combination of millions of views. In the trick-shot pool world, he’s known as the guy who converted a shot with his 90-pound Labrador sitting in the middle of the table. Add it all up, and he’s lived a heck of an interesting life crafting his skills in something the average Joe considers nothing more than a loose hobby.
“It kind of started when I was 12 or 13,” Markle said during a recent conversation in the basement of his home, which he’s converted into his pool room adorned with photos, awards and banners from tournaments he’s participated in over the years. “My friend had a pool table in his basement, so we would kind of just mess around. Then my dad took me to the old Irish Rover bar in Penndel, and this old guy showed me the diamond system on the table that helps you aim and angle the shots.
“Then he showed me a four-ball trick shot where he hit the cue ball into them and they all went in. I thought, ‘Wow, that was awesome.’ I was trying it at my friend’s house the same day, and we searched YouTube for easy shots we could practice. I think the interest was always there, but it took that guy showing me a trick shot to turn it into something.”
Markle eventually coaxed his parents into buying him his own table. When he wasn’t in school or playing baseball at Ryan, he was sequestered in the basement, practicing artistic shots for hours on end.
“In March 2007, I entered my first tournament at 13 or 14 at the Valley Forge Convention Center, and I got whooped,” he said. “But there were other events going on, so I went and found the trick shot guys. I talked to and got to know some of them, and they invited me to an amateur event.”
That event wasn’t until the following September in Parsippany, N.J., so Markle had plenty of time to practice. He was so nervous that he was visibly shaking before his first shot. Markle finished in last place, but the exposure was invaluable.
“I had the skills, but I needed to watch and learn,” he said. “Even Aaron Rodgers had to sit behind Brett Favre for a few years to see what it took to succeed. Even when I wasn’t shooting, I was watching their adjustments and preparation, writing down notes and absorbing like a sponge. This game is all about repetition. Even when you’re making shots, you have to keep practicing.”
Markle began competing on the pro tour, which he says consists of around 60-some players. His starting rank was 56th, and he now currently sits at 6th. Markle slowly started seeing more and more results the more tournaments he participated in, gradually finding his way into the playoffs and semifinals.
The format of the tournaments Markle plays in varies. Some are head-to-head in a round-robin style where he’s directly competing against other players; then there are others where results are tallied by individual aggregate point totals based on the difficulty level of the shot. Video compilations of Markle’s shots are a sight to behold, and can be viewed at www.stevemarklepool.com.
The trick-shot pool community is a tight-knit one, with players ranging from around Markle’s age to ones in their 50s. While an off-the-beat sport, players can thrive as far as popularity is concerned given the fact that they live in the age of social media, where the next artistic shot video could go viral on YouTube.
Markle is a perfectionist, which is how he’s climbed the ranks so exponentially. He always sets goals for himself, wanting to break millions of views on his videos, get into the top 10 and be featured on ESPN as part of Team USA. As of this past April, he was able to cross all three off the list when he was a member of the trick-shot national team. Though they lost to Europe, Markle still has to pinch himself as a reminder he’s not living a dream.
“The drive to want to be the best made me kill it,” he said. “I wanted to get to ESPN, which is the Super Bowl of what we do, and they only take four players. Everyone dreams of getting there in front of the cameras in the national spotlight. It’s rare to make it there, but I realized if I worked my tail off, that I could achieve that goal.”
And while artistic pool is not technically Markle’s full-time job, he certainly does well for someone his age. He said he gets quote requests almost daily from people interested in hiring him to perform, from high school graduation parties in New York City to corporate events, like the one at Sundance in Utah. He’s made as much as $3,000 to $4,000 a gig, and was even offered a chance to appear on the popular Spike reality television show Bar Rescue, though a scheduling conflict prevented it from occurring.
“If I would have pictured all of this when I first started out, I would have had a heart attack,” he said. “But once I nailed my first shot, the rest followed suit. A lot of people set goals and never hit them. I set three and hit them, so I don’t know what comes next. I’m working on a new video where my goal is to hit five million individual views. I want it to go viral, to come up with something that people want to share. The shots are insane and the creativity is there, but everything has to be right.”
Markle even got a chance to go back to his alma mater at Archbishop Ryan in December 2012, performing for a packed school assembly in front of almost 2,500 students.
“I really appreciated that, and I really wanted that show,” he said. “High school is usually the same bullcrap assemblies, so it was cool to go back there to perform for kids in the Northeast.”
Markle said that even though he’s ventured to the top of the trick-shot pool mountain, that it will still be a part of his life going forward.
“I’ll stick with it until my back gives out,” he said. “I’ve taken it all the way up as high as I could. It’s shaped my life. I’m quiet by nature, so it’s taught me how to be a professional, how to conduct meetings and talk to people. It’s taught me how to be a performer and entertainer.
“I love what I do. It’s something different, and I don’t know where I’d be without it. I’ve learned things that no college class could ever teach me. It started out as me just messing around with my dad and friends, and now I’m running a business, making money selling and promoting myself. It’s definitely shaped who I am today.” ull;•
To view Markle’s videos or to learn how to book him for a show, visit www.stevemarklepool.com.
Pool hall junkie: Steve Markle, a 2010 Archbishop Ryan grad, is making waves as the sixth-ranked trick-shot pool player in the country. MARIA POUCHNIKOVA / TIMES PHOTO
Pool hall junkie: Steve Markle, a 2010 Archbishop Ryan grad, is making waves as the sixth-ranked trick-shot pool player in the country. MARIA POUCHNIKOVA / TIMES PHOTO
