The great break away

I'm gonna vent a lil. Darts is something I do out of enjoyment and now, for very little money too. Against the wishes of a few people, I didn't go full bore into supporting running Medalist darts out of ONLY the Moose Club here in Anchorage. I knew Muldoon has been long forsaken and the Whaler would do great with it's own in-house dart league. I also really wanted to give Time Out Lounge a chance. The way I saw it, we allowed ourselves to be roped in to only one location. It was actually nice cause then every one was there and what not, but the down side, everything revolved around one bar. Now, I've brought in 2. Of course to do so, I restructured the pay outs and allowed people to make their own choices. People still went over to the Moose, and that's great, I feel the more locations the better. I did though have to give up being President of the dart association to run / operate my leagues. Sucks, but I do stand to make a little bit of money do so, so it is what it is. Now there's people out there saying I'm getting rich off this. I would like to know how. I organize and operate the league. I know the in's and out's. I've done them before. In fact I have done it for Hallie for free for HIM.

Now let's not confuse my leagues for the "Blind Draw". Here's a shocker, I don't care about the Blind Draw at all. It can be held in Nome as far as I care. Ya see I'm of teh mind set, the more opportunities to play darts the better. In CA and WA, there's blind draw and side tournaments almost every day of the week at different locations. So why does Anchorage, AK have a problem doing the same? Greed, narrow minds and the unwillingness to work together. It's a shame really.

So let's look at numbers. The Moose Club in Anchorage operates 3 leagues for a total of 28 people. D.S.C. Ventures operates 6 leagues for a total of 52 people between the 2 locations. I do see it growing at the Time Out Lounge as they've managed to embrace the leagues and it's players. The Whaler will grow also as it's location allows for those people in Eagle River and close to the bases a place to play well ran leagues without driving all the way into midtown. The difference in the D.S.C. Ventures locations and The Moose. The Moose tried to buy their players, cheap drinks (small too), great food (It is yummy!) and paying the players $30.00 fees (The Medalist player fee that's supposed to be paid by the player and not the location. Tsk, tsk.) but it's a private club, so in order to play out of there, you must pay the once a year $50.00 member fee (I'm guessing at amount.) D.S.C. Ventures has it's players pay the fees and a person to run the leagues. I know what games haven't been played, I update a web page with standings and schedule, I collect the sheet weekly. All the locations are great to play out of (though I've never played out of the Moose since soft tips moved in). Just saying, more locations, more people, shows a growth in our sport.

I'm glad that I did it this way. The people playing within my leagues are fun and we're all having a good time. It's fun to be able to give people more of their money and encourage better play over all. I'm disappointed that all this may kill the association. Only time will tell.