When they are not rushing between lectures and labs, students at the College of William and Mary find time to join a wide range of clubs and participate in various recreational activities. One organization allows a combination of the two — a sense of community and the opportunity to shoot pool beneath the Sadler Dining Hall.
Union Central in the Sadler Center offers students a place to relax and play various board games, video games and, of course, pool.
“If you just sit and watch at Union Central, you will see hundreds and hundreds of different people play pool,” president Parker White ’27 said.
Cue Club was first founded in 2023 by Vice President Nick Vaughan ’26. Vaughan cited the sense of community at Union Central as her inspiration.
“It was me and another student who has now since graduated who were kind of hanging around the tables for, that would’ve been the fall and spring there. But specifically in the fall, we were like, ‘wow, there is such a community,’” Vaughan said. “It was kind of a ragtag, if you will, community of folks who are knowing each other, recognizing each other and engaging in the space together.”
However, Vaughan spent her next year in Scotland as part of the St Andrew’s Joint Degree Programme, causing the club to fizzle out. That is, until she, alongside White, revived the billiards-centered community in the fall of 2025.
“One of, if not the biggest part of my college experience is the friends I’ve made through Cue Club,” White said. “That’s what drives me to do this whole thing — I want other people, especially underclassmen, to have the same experience, because it was so important for me.”
The club opens its doors to members of all levels, creating a community of diverse experiences that encourages learning from one another.
“Cue Club is a chill, open space where people can learn how to play pool, or just play pool with other people who have the same passion,” club member Julia Beverley ’26 said. “If there was one word I’d use to describe it, it’s chill.”
Every Tuesday at 7 p.m., people gather in Union Central for an evening of gameplay. One aspect of club meetings is a “teaching table” led by Vaughan.
“People just walk in like, ‘I don’t know how this works’ or ‘I want to figure out this’ or ‘I want to get better at this,’ and Nick will walk you through the steps you can take and just how to be better,” White said.
Additionally, more experienced members can compete in mini-tournaments at Tuesday meetings.
“The other table is a ‘King of the Hill’ free-play table where everyone puts their name in a queue,” White said. “The first people in the queue go, they play, winner stays on and loser gets off.”
During these meetings, Cue Club’s executive board seeks to work out how to move forward and establish themselves during the club’s early stages.
“It all comes back to whether folks are excited around what we’re trying to design, if it’s things that people are actually interested in,” Vaughan said. “And so far, I think that’s been a pretty emphatic yes.”
This enthusiastic outlook has created lasting friendships between club members.
“It’s composed of all my friends, and I have the best time with them whenever we play pool,” Beverley said.
As close member relationships are at its core, Cue Club hopes to offer a space free from the prejudices that infiltrate typical pool communities.
“That’s another reason why this community here is so important, because we can create a space that’s entirely devoid of those lingering legacies of that kind of misogynistic, older male-dominated space that bars, and by extension, pool, sometimes tend to be,” Vaughan said. “We can totally just get rid of that entirely.”
Due to the club’s recent establishment, White and Vaughan have been working hard to bring new members of all ages to these meetings.
“There are a couple members of the club who are older or they’re veterans and stuff like that, and something I’ve learned from them is that they don’t always feel comfortable joining a lot of student orgs,” White said. “And so [we’re] trying to reach out to them and get something done, and just expanding the amount of people who show up to play pool. Because the more people we have, the more stuff we can do.”
With more and more new faces, Cue Club hopes to expand beyond their Tuesday gameplay.
“It’s important, having different events and not only focusing on pool, but maybe a more social event outside of Union Central,” Beverley said. “I think it would be cool to go to Corner Pocket.”
The Corner Pocket is a pool hall in Williamsburg that would allow Cue Club to join a local league and play against other teams.
“They even have a playoff session,” Vaughan said. “If, theoretically, you did really well, you’d get to play in Vegas on national TV.”
Within the College, Union Central hosts an open doubles and singles tournament each semester, which many club members partake in.
“I think just that energy of being at a pool tournament surrounded by everyone that’s completely invested is my favorite memory,” Beverley said.
In the future, Cue Club plans to emulate these tournaments in their own events.
Beyond expanding club activities, Vaughan believes strongly in expanding access to pool to those with physical disabilities. Specifically, she wants to bring the inclusive nature of the billiards community she found at St Andrew’s to the College.
“If accessibility is what we believe in, and it was, we took it very seriously that everyone should have a place at the table,” Vaughan said. “How do we challenge and shift how the game is played so that more people can come engage with it?”
While they work to bring about new opportunities and experiences for their members, Cue Club’s executive board is excited to see where the future might lead them.
“Some of the folks have changed, some people have left, some new people have rolled around,” Vaughan said. “But there’s still kind of this je ne sais quoi about hanging out at the tables and you see somebody who rocks up and maybe you don’t know him, but all the other tables are full, so they ask if they can play with you. And, of course, you say yes.”
Cue Club is always willing to hear from potential new members. Join them at Union Central on Tuesdays or email cueclub@wm.edu to join the GroupMe and get playing!
