I’ve never been one for sports. I don’t religiously follow teams, though I will watch a game recap. I could never properly perform a basketball layup, throw or catch a football with any finesse, or hit a baseball no matter how hard I tried, so I was always the last one to get picked for a team.

I was turned off from tennis when some bozo said he’d coach me for free, but it turned out he just wanted someone he could blast 200mph serves at. I had even bought a tennis racket with the intention of learning the basics. Besides, I figured women might take notice (more like pity) of a strapping young man trying to whack a fuzzy yellow ball across a net and failing miserably. And, sadly, no women took notice. 

A friend of mine tried and failed to teach me the finer points of golf. While I enjoy smacking the hell out of those little white balls on a driving range, I absolutely suck at playing the game on a course. I figured that if I was going to spend that much time in sand traps, I may as well go to a beach instead.

There are really only two activities that may loosely be considered sports that I am any good at: table tennis (ping pong) and darts.

I picked up table tennis during my stint in the military while stationed in Thailand. I was looking for something to do that didn’t cost money and didn’t involve drinking. I started playing in the NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer) rec rooms on the bases wherever I was stationed, and I got to be fairly good, winning more matches than I lost.

During my time at IBM, I had a manager who also enjoyed ping pong and was quite good at it, though he was half again my age at the time. We discovered that IBM had a table tennis setup in one of the lounges on site, and my manager and I would go and play during our lunch breaks. 

We weren’t in the league of those world class players who stand ten feet away from the table and can make the ball move blindingly fast or seem to hover just above the net, but we had a lot of fun. 

I don’t play anymore, though I’m sure I’ll pick it up again given the opportunity.

I started playing darts after looking for something that my then-wife and I could do together after my daughter went off to college. I bought an electronic dart board. It wasn’t very good and broke not long after we started playing regularly. But we played enough that we were hooked, so I bought better one.

While I got fairly decent at it, my ex got really good, beating me 3 out of 5 games almost every time we played. I think she practiced while I was at work, though she never would admit it. 

She had a very unconventional way of throwing. She would swing her arms like a baseball pitcher winding up for a pitch, then throw the dart, not hard, but with uncanny accuracy. My throwing style at the time was copied from players I’d seen on the internet. They all threw basically the same way; using the forearm and wrist to kind of flick the dart. These guys were pros, but my mimicked throw produced mixed results. You can imagine my frustration at losing to a woman who threw darts like a Yankee pitcher trying for a no-hitter.

Since that time, my dart throwing accuracy has improved. Back in 2019, the organization that hosted me while I was in Namibia, the Rössing Foundation, had put on a sporting event for its employees. Darts was among the activities, and I won the first-place trophy! The first time I’d ever won a trophy for anything!

While I was in Namibia, I found that the locals also enjoyed darts, and I would play them after work at a local bar. It was there, oddly enough, that I learned to associate beer with darts. An association that I enjoy to this day.

My skills had improved since returning from Namibia (so did my beer drinking), enough so that I wound up on a team in the Orlando Darts League. We played out of Fiddler’s Green in Winter Park. I was there for 3 seasons, and the second season I was there, we were first in our division and got a trophy for our efforts!  Every game was enhanced by a pint or two of Guinness. 

Since moving to the Greenville, SC area, however, my dart throwing skills have declined dramatically. I was still good enough to get signed onto a team out of Doc’s Tavern in Greenville, and we actually won first place in our division last season, but we did so without much help from me. This season my team, called ‘No Ton Intended’, moved up to Division 2 and we are getting spanked soundly by nearly every team we’ve played so far. And I don’t think I’ve won a match yet this season, regardless of how many beers I drank.

I know what the problem is: practice, or rather, the lack of it. Like any skill, throwing a pointy bit of metal at a 1-inch diameter target about 8 feet away and hitting it consistently takes practice. Lots and lots of practice. 

A quick search on the internet reveals that professional darters practice anywhere between 1 hour up to an astounding 12 hours a day!! I’m retired and I enjoy throwing, but 12 hours a day?? 

Nope!

Still, after reviewing my league performance so far this season, it’s obvious that I need to practice. A lot. The problem is that I have nothing to practice on. I’ve moved into my house about 4 months ago, and my focus has been on fitting up the house to make it feel like home. The apartment I had the year before I moved in was so small that I had to go outside to change my mind. (Old joke, but still makes me chuckle.) Places where I could go to practice were inconveniently far away for daily throws. What I need is a dart setup here, in my house somewhere. 

Now, I’m on a mission!

Other tasks around the house have been put on hold until I can establish a dart practice space. I can’t just throw a dartboard on a wall and have at it. A dartboard must be hung at a specific height (5 feet, 8 inches from floor to bullseye) and must be a specific distance from the throw line (7 feet, 8 and 3/4 inches). There must be proper lighting. There should be a backboard behind the dartboard that can catch errant throws without causing damage to the wall. And more. 

An engineering challenge that is not outside the scope of my abilities.

So, after careful consideration ( and a few beers), I’ve decided to build a dart practice setup consisting of, not 1, not 2, but 3 dart boards: a regulation board, a practice board where the high-point target areas are all reduced in size, and an electronic dart board.

I’m going to go all out with this setup. I’m putting it in my garage. The walls will be painted. The floor will be epoxy-coated, and the garage will be kept neat and free of clutter and accumulated stuff. 

That’s the goal anyway. Right now, the floor is bare concrete. The walls are painted, but there’s stuff everywhere. 

OK, so, it’s a work in progress, but there is progress. Check out these photos…

It turned out pretty good, even after a few missteps. 

So, now that I have a place to practice, I have no excuse not to get better. But, you how people will make a resolution to lose weight and exercise more, and they spend a lot of money and buy fancy exercise equipment and set it all up, then promptly ignore it? 

Yeah. 

Stay tuned.

Vern