Jean Balukas - Honors

Honors

In 1975, when she was 15-years old, Balukas was already described as the "best female pool player in the world". By 1987, Balukas's dominance of women's professional pool was so complete that it was described as "breathtaking" in its scope by The New York Times. Announcers had long since stopped calling Balukas "the Little Princess," but presented her as "the Queen". By that time she had won the World Straight Pool Championship women's division eight of the prior nine years, and over the same time period, every single women's professional tournament in which she competed — 16 in all. She had been honored as BCA Player of the Year five times. In 1985 became the second woman (after Dorothy Wise) to be inducted into the BCA Hall of Fame, with the additional honor of being its youngest inductee, at just under 27 years of age. In 1999, Balukas was ranked number fifteen on Billiard Digest's Fifty Greatest Players of the Century.