Eleanor Callado could not control her nerves under the stares of the 300 onlookers surrounding her pool table. It was the final round of the Junior National Billiard Congress of America tournament, and despite her shaking hands Callado was able to come from behind to take home the title.

The crowd erupted in cheer, cameras flashed, and her mother and sister burst into tears when Callado finally sunk the eight ball. Most of Callado's matches have a smaller, more casual audience than the tournament last July.

When Callado, a 20-year-old marketing major, isn't ringing up customers or cleaning the windows at her part time job at the Cesar Chavez Student Centers Rack-N-Cue, she can be found leaning beside a pool table silently studying her next move, often in a match against one of the best male or female semi-professional pool players in the Western region. Her tournaments often take place at other universities or in pool halls around the Bay Area.

Last Friday she competed at the Rack-N-Cue's weekly single-elimination, Moneyball tournament, which is open to students of any skill level. The first player to win five games out of nine in a single match gets to advance to compete with the other winners while the loser is eliminated from the game. Players pay a ten dollar entry fee in which first place gets 60 percent of the money pot and second place gets 40 percent.

Callado was eliminated in her second match.

"You have to love what you're doing. I laugh at myself because getting angry and cussing, you're thinking too much. You got to let go," she said.

Most of the students pacing between the tables of the Cesar Chavez Student Center's Rack-N-Cue are young men putting in some table time during their lunch hour. The few women who visit the pool hall are usually accompanying their boyfriends, never actually picking up a stick.

Quetzal Cortes, 24, and currently working on his teaching credential at SF State, also doubles as the Rack-N-Cue game room manager. He is proud of Callado's achievements because it is hard to find women who want to play competitively, he said.

Callado is one of a group of eight women from SF State who compete several times a year in the Association of College Unions International regional billiard tournaments. The organization provides programs and activities for students enrolled at colleges and universities nationwide, arranging everything from poetry slams to college bowling tournaments. She has represented SF State in the junior nationals and ranked number one in the junior standing women's division 18 and under age group.

Photography is another one of Callado's passions. In addition to working on a website with photographs of the Women's Western Regional 9-ball Tour, she's often asked to shoot photos at family functions and parties. But the billiard hall, she said, was the first thing she looked for when she came to SF State.

She picked up pool at the age of eight from her father who began playing when he was 12 years old. Her mother was supportive of Callado's interest in pool, but disliked the idea of their father taking them out to a "smoking, cussing filled environment and staying out late." She remembers watching videos of his "fancy trick shots" and being on her "tip-toes" when he taught her the basics of pool.

She usually practices by herself at the Rack-N-Cue and tries to play everyday for atleast an hour.

After weekends of practicing pool and tournaments, Callado has developed a grace and calm in her playing style that appears fluid, almost gentle, every time she taps the ball. Her composed and unflinching exterior is illusory to the nervousness she often experiences while competing.

"[Pool] is very mental. Any distraction, any slight sound, like a camera flash, some people get really angry about that," she said.