The Sparky figurine sat strapped into its little electric chair at the center of the Metallica playfield while four players took turns, for 38 minutes, trying to light it up. This was the opening game of the A Finals at Belles & Chimes SATX’s second Summer 2026 meet — four competitors around a single machine on a hot Sunday evening — and when the last ball drained, it was Destiny Moreno, seeded dead last in the four-woman field, who came away with the win.
Four players, one bracket group, four games to settle it. In a field that small the arithmetic is merciless: one fourth-place finish can undo an afternoon, and one strong game can rescue it. By the time the machines went quiet, two of those four had played all the way to a tie at the very top.
Sparky and the Skillshot
Stern built its Metallica (Pro) around John Borg’s 2013 design, and the table’s calling card is that electric chair, where the Sparky figurine waits to be zapped — a licensed-music machine that has held a 7.45 rating across 26 ballots on IPDB. It rewards players who know its openings: hold the left flipper, plunge into the flashing right-pops rollover lane, and the machine hands over a 3X skillshot before the ball is fully in play.
Moreno took the opener there, finishing ahead of top seed Lauren Drullinger, with Emily Matson third and organizer Christina Cheeseman shut out in fourth. It was an early tell for how the night would run — the strongest-ranked player in the room quietly going about her business from the bottom of the bracket.
The Lead Swaps Hands
The night played out at What’s Brewing Coffee Roasters, a family-owned San Antonio roaster that keeps its pinball rooms walled off from the espresso counter and has built a reputation as an easy, welcoming place to play — a fitting home for a Belles & Chimes meet while the thermometer outside pushed past 94 degrees. The four-machine bank on offer ranged from a 1978 Bally to a 2023 Pulp Fiction (SE), close to half a century of design in one room.
The second game moved to Harlem Globetrotters On Tour, the oldest table in the bank at that 1978 Bally, and here Drullinger answered. She won the 50-minute game with Matson right behind her in second — Matson’s best result of the night — while Moreno settled for third. That flipped the standings: Drullinger now sat a point clear at the front.
Then came Creature from the Black Lagoon, the 1992 Bally, and it played fast — 16 minutes, start to finish. Cheeseman, running the event and blanked through two games, finally broke through and won it outright. Moreno’s second place on the Creature was the quieter result, but it was the one that mattered, pulling her level with Drullinger atop the standings and setting up a finish neither could control on her own.
The Bottom Seed at the Front
Moreno’s afternoon read like a small upset on paper. The organizer’s manual seeding had slotted her fourth of four, yet she carried the strongest IFPA ranking in the room at #5994, and she’d arrived on a rough stretch — finishes of 29th, 36th, 18th, 26th and 30th across her most recent events. On a night when one great game could win it, she found enough of them to erase the seeding entirely, in her 292nd career tournament.
She did it against familiar company. Moreno and Cheeseman have crossed paths at 15 shared tournaments, a rivalry that stays close season after season; this time Moreno finished ahead, narrowing the margin between them by a single result. She’s met Matson at a dozen events too, and again kept a step in front. The whole field, for that matter, was Texan and IFPA-ranked, averaging #7664 nationally — four players who know each other’s games well, carrying 805 combined career events into one small room.
Two Names on the Top Step
By the end of regulation the ledger was tied: Drullinger and Moreno had each done enough to claim first, the top seed and the bottom seed of the same bracket meeting in the middle. A fourth game between the two leaders went Drullinger’s way, but the standings held them level, and the meet closed with both women sharing the win rather than one edging the other out.
For Drullinger, the co-championship caps a quieter climb — her IFPA rating has risen year over year, up to #8456 from deeper in the four figures a season ago. For Moreno, it’s the payoff for a long grind through a middling summer, her first tournament win in some time. Cheeseman took third at her own event, and left with the satisfaction of that Creature run, the one game she carried wire to wire. Matson, the newest of the four with 35 career tournaments but the best state ranking in the field at TX #200, closed things out in fourth, her runner-up on the Globetrotters the highlight of her card.
A Finals podium — Belles & Chimes SATX, Summer 2026 #2:
- 1st: Lauren Drullinger (IFPA #8456)
- 1st: Destiny Moreno (IFPA #5994)
- 3rd: Christina Cheeseman (IFPA #7185)
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