By Pauline Odhiambo
Shaiyene Fritz, 22, is talking about her childhood journey from the darkness of Cape Town's gangster-ridden Lavender Hill to the light of salvation through sport, when the electricity goes off.
In the semi-darkness of yet another routine blackout that South Africa has become infamous for, pool champion Shaiyene's trophies glimmer defiantly – including five gold and three silver medals.
"When you are a child in Lavender Hill, you get exposed to so many things that you are forced to grow up. You can’t enjoy your childhood like kids elsewhere," she tells TRT Afrika.
"The area is the hub of gangsters, and the rate of teen pregnancies is high. Living in an area where you are exposed to all of this, it is difficult to thrive," she adds.
It is a testament to her defiant spirit that Shaiyene didn't allow growing up poor in a neighbourhood of guns and gore to ground her into submission.
The third-year student at Stellenbosch University recalls that at the age of nine, her mother's job loss forced the family to move from a three-bedroom house to a single-room shack in Lavender Hill.
Worse was to follow. Gangsters stabbed Shaiyene’s older brother in 2018, leaving him hospitalised for a month. "My brother had an argument with someone affiliated to one of the local gangs. These gangsters wanted to kill him for it," she says.
"When you grow up in this area you try to stay away from gangsters as much as possible. But sometimes they just find you. They come looking for you."
As a student of Grade 9, Shaiyene had to duck bullets while returning home from school one day.
"All of a sudden, there was shooting, and we had to run into a nearby house to hide until the gunfire died down.
When you grow up in Lavender Hill, you become accustomed to such things. You hear shooting constantly, even while you are lying in your bed, and bullets are being fired a few houses away. People have actually become numb to it," she says.
The Little League
Growing up in an atmosphere of violence, Shaiyene sought sanctuary in the game shops of Lavender Hill that included pool tables. She spent most of her free time there, first becoming interested in the game at nine years old and going on to make pool her mission.
Ten rounds of pool would cost her 10 rand ($ 0.50), and it was money well spent.
"We first started playing against other game shops in the area that had arcade games and pool tables. We called it a social league, and I just wanted to beat the boys," says Shaiyene.
As time went by, her skills improved, and she eventually drew the attention of competitive sports recruiters. "I got recruited to play for a team versus other game shops for the social league.
We did that for about a year; then we started playing in the provincial league." In 2015, Shaiyene and her team won the national championships. This was a defining moment for her, and she would later win another trophy while playing for the women's team.
"In 2016, we defended our title. This is also the year that I played for the ladies’ team for the first time. I was the youngest in the team, and we ended up winning the ladies' 2018 championships," she recalls.
Game hustle
Playing at the national level since 2015 has come at a cost. Shaiyene sometimes struggles raising the funds required to attend tournaments.
"I have raised up to US $526 dollars a year to pay for at least two tournaments. Growing up with an unemployed single mother, we have had to come up with the money somehow," she says. "I have walked around neighbourhoods selling raffle tickets. I have been raising funds since 2014."
For her first international tournament in Russia, Shaiyene needed to raise $160 – a goal she accomplished easily. But she has sometimes travelled to tournaments with barely enough to eat.
Last year, she travelled on a one-way bus ticket from Cape Town to Johannesburg to participate in the South Africa Blackball Championships. With only $10 in her pocket, she had no clue how she would get back home.
But the trip paid off when she ranked 9th in her category, qualifying to be part of the team that would represent South Africa at the World Blackball Championships in Morocco.
"We each got about 500 rand as prize money, which was enough to pay for my bus ticket home," Shaiyene recounts. "For the Morocco trip, I had to raise about 40,000 rand ($2,100). I hosted raffles and sold sausages with my boyfriend's help. We sold the rolls for about $2 each."
But selling raffle tickets and sausages wasn't enough to raise the money needed. Just in the nick of time, a South African company specialising in pool tables offered Shaiyene a brand ambassadorship role, giving her a pool table that she used to hold bigger raffles.
“I made about 30,000 rand, which is about $1500. That was very promising being the first time I was getting recognition from a big company. It took me three-and-a-half months to raise all the money, and that gave me the boost I needed to make the trip," says Shaiyene.
World Champion
Shaiyene's biggest win so far came in Morocco, when she and her team won an international title. "I was so proud of myself for getting a gold medal. It was an amazing feeling," she says.
The young woman credits her family and the student community at Stellenbosch University for supporting her career as a professional pool player. The student community raised the $2,000 she needed to attend another tournament in China in March this year.
“They started donating and even posting about me on TikTok, which led to more donations coming in. I suddenly got a big donation from an anonymous person, who donated 15,000 rand, which is about 700 dollars," Shaiyene says. "With that, I could buy my plane ticket to China."
On her return from China, Shaiyene and her boyfriend started the Shaiyene Fritz Foundation in May. The foundation focuses on giving young people access to education through bursaries and talent coaching.
"There are so many children who need to go to Argentina for soccer, or England for rugby, but their mothers can't afford it," says Shaiyene. "It would be nice to say to them, 'Here's full funding', so that they don't have to go through the same struggle I went through to raise money."
