Fall 2015 www.twincitydarts.com Volume XXXIX No. 4 Charles F. Stutz January 10, 1917 - January 9, 2015 See inside for more on Charles Stutz Memorial Tournament and much more. Visit www.twincitydarts.com for more information on darts.
Hello Darters, I would like to wish everyone a happy holiday season, and hopefully a mild winter. With the fall season underway, many new changes in the T.C.D.A. have been started, with our social media, new tournament, and updating our website. Our new Vice President, Nick Harris is heading up our new Social Media department, with our new Twitter and Face book accounts. When you are out throwing darts, take some pictures and send them to our Instagram account or post them yourself. Nick is doing a great job and makes the posting fun to follow. With our newest tournament addition, the Stutz Annual Invitational, we are trying to encourage all levels of our membership to get out and play. We had a great turnout of all divisions, and it made for a fun night of darts. It s always nice when we get these occasions, for all of our members, can get together and play. As Charles himself, he would have been proud of this event Hats off to our new tournament director, Holger Stilgenbauer, for a well-run tournament. We are looking forward to the upcoming State and Dartmania with his new changes. He has started a new program that lets you following the tournament online, which will help in running the larger events. I am sure we will see many new updates in the next few years. Our web site has been getting some updates and additions. We have also added and new division and are trying out a new AA statistics posting. If it works well, we may add it to the other divisions. All of these changes were only made possible by the work of Paul Cushing. I would like to thank all of the many people that give of their time and energy to make our organization what it is today. I look forward to the new year with the help of our Board of Directors and members to continue making this a great organization. Happy Darting. Mike Anderson President A Few Words from the Tournament Director I m very honored to address you as the new Tournament Director for the T.C.D.A. I will do my very best to live up to the expectations you and the T.C.D.A. board of directors put in me. I know that nobody is perfect, however we have an excellent and great Tournament Committee and combined we will move the T.C.D.A. forward and try to provide fun events that will promote Darts and the T.C.D.A. Our effort will not only focus on growing the membership, but also to provide for our current T.C.D.A. members and improve Darts throughout the Twin Cities, the state of Minnesota and across the borders. I value everyone s feedback, criticism and new ideas; please provide your comments and suggestions to any member of the Tournament committee or myself. 1 st Annual Charles F. Stutz Memorial tournament We added the Charles F. Stutz Memorial tournament to the T.C.D.A. Steel Tip tournament series in honor and memory of recently past former President and T.C.D.A. supporter Charles F. Stutz.
On October 3 rd we started the 1 st T.C.D.A. Member ONLY tournament with a BANG! I was very exited to see so many members support us with this event and I want to THANK the 40 players that were present at the start of the new tournament season. It was a great turnout as 20 C/B Division Players (including Gold and Pub-Fun Triples) and 20 A/AA Division Players showed up to provide for a fair and even A/B draw to keep the tournament competitive and equally fun for everyone and every skill level. Some awesome darts were played and I want to congratulate the Winners (depicted below). We also had a very exiting first T80 for a new member of the T.C.D.A. community. Well done Marcus Higgins, not to dismiss any other quality darts. It was a good start, however I m hopeful to grow the 2 nd Annual Charles F. Stutz Memorial even bigger for 2016. So get the work out and encourage your teammates to join us for next year s event. A tournament like this would not be possible without the attendance of our members. Thanks again for your support. Also not without the help and hard work of the tournament committee (Mike Anderson, Gregg Oldenkamp, Margo Ulrich and Kirsten Neumann) and the volunteers. We had many Volunteers supporting in setup/teardown and running the brackets. THANK you Chris Weatherly, Matt Jones, Brian Wegleitner, Nick Harris, Jeff Hafner, David Lawrence, Karen Ekstrum and anyone I forgot to mention. A very special THANK YOU also to Sharon Lohmar for all the help and to organize sponsors, giveaways and the initiative (stubbornness) to get this highlight added to the T.C.D.A. tournament calendar. Last but least a big shout out and thanks to Biffs Bar and Grill for very nicely setup venue and excellent wait and bar staff. I was also very happy for the encouraging words and the support that Nina provided us. Thanks again to everyone to keep the memories of a great man alive with supporting the T.C.D.A.. Taking a look ahead to 2016. For 2016 we have a new venue to host the Minnesota State Steel Tournament and the 16 th Dartmania Extravaganza. Both events will be held at the Mermaid Event Center in Mounds View. On February 20 th, 2016, the T.C.D.A. will host the State Steel Tournament to crown new State Champions. Encouraged by the numbers of the Charles F. Stutz Memorial tournament, I am hopeful to also have a full flight in the B Singles event that is open to T.C.D.A. members only playing in Gold, Pub-Fun Triples and Classic B and C divisions. Dartmania is scheduled for April 8 th 10 th, 2016 and we intent to make it even more fun, bigger and better with the addition of some events catering to all skill levels. We also plan adding one or more one-day Dart tournaments to expand the T.C.D.A. foot print in the Minnesota tournament calendar and promote the game of Darts we all love and our fantastic organization. More details for all the upcoming tournaments will be posted online as they become available. Again, Thank you all for your support. Shoot em well, and good darts. Holger Stilgenbauer T.C.D.A. Tournament Director
Charles F. Stutz Memorial Tournament Results A/B Draw 1 st James McConnell/Tim Maguire 2nd David Laurence/Joe Funken
3rd Marcus Higgins, Dustin Tuttle 4th Kirsten Neumann, Chris Williams 5th/6th Jeremy Little, Steve McGuire Jim Hunt, Dave Blake Hard Luck 1 st John Jenkinson, Bob Mielke 2 nd Terry Sears, Jessica Lunde 3 rd Paul Cook, Karol Keeler
Pictures from the 1 st Annual Charles F. Stutz Memorial Tournament
Jack Fischer Chapter 4 - Your Stance The main purpose of any good dart player s stance is a neutral position for your body and as comfortable as humanly possible. Stand erect with your toes of both feet pointed at the dart board and behind the toe/hockey line with your feet spread apart the distance of your shoulders and no more. Your weight will be evenly distributed on both feet during the act of throwing. During the act of throwing, the only part of you that moves will be your throwing arm. Remember DO NOT a. Move your head. b. Lift one foot. c. Bend your knees. d. Sway back and forth or side to side. e. Move your shoulders f. Lift your heels off the floor. When you have mastered the above six do nots and have let your throwing arm do all the work, you have just become a better than average player. In the closing of this chapter, may I magnify the advantage of both feet on the toe/hockey line when you are playing a game that requires a double number to start the game. When you are in this position, your darts will not drift from side to side but will vary vertically or up and down. Thus means you can throw a double 14, 11, and 8 on the left side of the board and double 13, 6, and 10 on the right side without excessive side drift. This is only one example. No matter what your target may be, side drift is held to a minimum. A Heartbeat Away: The Veep's View When a few folks politely asked me to put together a column for the Bull & Ton, my first reaction was an inner acknowledgment that no one had previously told me writing articles was going to be part of the job as vice-president. I had been more under the impression I would get to just sit there mindlessly at board meetings, ready to step in on the off-chance Mike ever happened to keel over midmeeting from a heart attack.
Were that to happen I imagined that I might say something like, "Mike was a great guy. Meeting adjourned." You know; all very official-sounding. Well, it's not quite like that. On day one with this year's board meeting, Mike challenged each of the members to pick up an oar and own a project of each our choosing that will improve the experience of the TCDA membership in some way. Each one of us have been diligently doing that, and you've hopefully all begun to see some of the positive results stemming from those honest efforts by your board, committee members, and divisional advisors. And there are a lot of awesome things going on. We have strong activities with the website, new tournaments, building out some new membership areas geographically, and the list goes on. I'm truly impressed with the work that so many of your peers in the TCDA are doing, and pleased to have been asked to be part of the team. For my part, I'm trying to do some new things with social media for the TCDA. I'm proud to say that I think our social media efforts are going very well. That's largely due to the fact that we have a great group of TCDA members that are jumping in with both feet, so thank you to everyone who has liked a post on Facebook, tweeted or retweeted something on Twitter, or re-shared a picture. I'm definitely not declaring it a success yet since, as with many things, building a robust presence in social media takes time. However, we're off to a nice start. For those that are curious and would like to help, please keep reading and at the end of this article, I'll add a couple details about some specific ways you can do that (as well as have some fun along the way!). Before getting to that, here are a few seemingly random song titles that would appear to have absolutely nothing in common: "Seven Nation Army" by The White Stripes, "Don't Stop the Party" by Pitbull, "The Power" by SNAP!, "Jump Around" by House of Pain, "Down Under" by Men at Work, "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" by Dropkick Murphys, and "Give it Up" by KC & the Sunshine Band. Turns out that what these songs all have in common is that they are the walk-on songs for some of the world's top professional steel-tip darts players. As the players are being introduced into an arena this music, which they selected for themselves, plays on the speakers. It's a bit of a combination of getting the crowd excited, while also being relevant to the player in some way. For those that may be curious, here are the players that use each of those songs, by the way: Michael Van Gerwen - "Seven Nation Army" Peter Wright - "Don't Stop the Party" Phil Taylor - "The Power" Gary Anderson - "Jump Around"
Simon Whitlock - "Down Under" Brendan Dolan - "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" Vincent Van Der Voort - "Give it Up" Why mention this? It might be fun to play around with this idea on social media for the TCDA. Give some real thought to what your selection might be for walk-on music if you were ever given the opportunity. Who knows? Perhaps we can put something fun together on Facebook or Instagram for members of the TCDA to celebrate all the song choices you each might have! I know I've got mine selected already. By the way no picking songs for others! So if Greg Oldenkamp tells me Mike Anderson's walk on music is "Loser" by Beck, I may not believe it... Moving along, I did mention earlier that I would be suggesting some ways to engage on social media, so I'll wrap up with those. To start, our social media now includes a Facebook public page (www.facebook.com/officialtcda), Facebook group, Twitter account (@TwinCityDarts), and Instagram account (www.instagram.com/officialtcda). So if you have an account on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram media platform(s), it would be fantastic if you could 'follow' and 'like' us if you aren't already. Then -- and this is the important part -- when you see the account posting and asking for input, write us back! Post something! Retweet us! As we increase our activity level with all of you, our online community then becomes more important to other companies and organizations over time, and they will want to engage with us. All that combines to create an opportunity to get more people aware of darts and join in the fun with the TCDA. Along those lines, if you have something shareable about darts but would prefer not to share it yourself, or just think it might look funnier or be more appropriate coming from the TCDA itself, we have you covered. Just send an email to the TCDA and we can post it. Send your pictures or your comments to share to OfficialTCDA@gmail.com, and we'll use it if we can. So last of all, here's that call to action I mentioned earlier. If you are already on Twitter, great. If you aren't please consider signing up and then once you do, here's an easy way to get involved with helping the TCDA! This is a super simple approach to getting that first tweet out of the way. 1. Open the Twitter application (or app) 2. Click on the icon with the feather quill to compose a tweet 3. Write out a fun message to the TCDA, being sure to include @TwinCityDarts in the sentence so it reaches us. 4. End with a hashtag like #darts, or #lovethedarts, or #fun
5. Be sure and keep an eye on the character count in the lower corner as you type. If you exceed 140 characters the counter will turn red and go into negative numbers, meaning you should shorten the tweet 6. Press Tweet! 7. Watch out for a response from the TCDA Twitter account! :-) And that's all there is to it! Piece of cake, and way easier than trying to take out a ton-plus finish when your opponent is already down to an out to win a match. Thanks to everyone for reading this, and I look forward to seeing the online community for the TCDA continue to activate and grow. P.S. - once we get going with these, we already have some ideas about videos and so forth for YouTube as well, so you can look for that to come up as a topic in a future edition of the Bull & Ton! Nick Harris Vice-President