ETX Elite brought home top prize from the APA Team Captains Pool Championship, beating hundreds of teams nationwide.
TYLER, Texas — Three Tyler residents returned home with $10,000 and a national title after winning the 2025 APA Team Captains Pool Championship in Las Vegas.
The team, known as ETX Elite, was one of 384 squads nationwide that qualified for the American Poolplayers Association’s annual competition at the Westgate Las Vegas.
Team members Maci Hodges, Mike Pickering and Mario Garcia outlasted the field earlier this month to claim the top prize and championship bragging rights.
All three players are captains of their own teams in Tyler’s local APA League, where they compete regularly.
The championship match was live-streamed and remains available to watch online.
The Team Captains Championship was part of the APA World Pool Championships, which took place in August and featured nearly 14,000 players competing across three divisions for more than $1.3 million in prize money.
The APA, based in Lake Saint Louis, Missouri, sanctions the world’s largest amateur pool league with more than 250,000 members in the United States and Canada. The association organizes three major annual tournaments that together award nearly $2 million in cash and prizes.