Darts in the Abacos - right on target
By Alice Bain - The Abaconian - 1 August 2002

The Abaco Darts Association will soon be attending the Caribbean and America"s cup in Grand Cayman this year and is presently promoting its first "summer league" ever. The association president, Donald "Stinger" Burrows, spoke about the league and its upcoming international tournament.

"The summer league is intended to introduce more players interested in the Abaco Darts Association," he said. "Every Wednesday night we play a double header, and this league will run til the end of September. We will be having tournaments for trophies as well, both team trophies and individual player trophies. We"re looking for more darts shooters for the regular season which begins at the end of October each year." Locally four teams of five shooters each participate in the league, the Big Boys, the Angels, the Stars and the Stella Arrows. The association also plays against leagues in Freeport and Nassau and will be leaving on July 26th for the Caribbean and America"s Cup in Grand Cayman. "The Bahamas is defending champion!" enthuses Mr. Burrows. "Stinger" is in his second year as team captain.

Malcolm Spicer is President of the Bahamas Darts Federation, Secretary General of the Caribbean Darts Organization, Coordinator of the America"s Cup Committee and Secretary of the Abaco Darts Association. He made further observations about the Bahamian team"s candidacy for the Cup this year. "The Bahamian players have such a high standard because we play every day, every week, through the year. We take darts very seriously, and like any other sport if you practice at it, you get good. We have 70 or 80 darts teams in the Bahamas which make darts probably the largest sporting organization in the country. We hold three national tournaments each year, and we"ve gone somewhere as a national team for the past fifteen years, either to the World Cup or the Caribbean Cup.

We missed only one Cup in Australia which we couldn"t attend due to lack of funds but we did attend the World Cup in Malaysia ten days after September 11th! For the World Cup we"ve been to Malaysia, South Africa, the Netherlands, Las Vegas, England, Switzerland and Canada and we have attended the Caribbean Cup in the Turks and Caicos, Trinidad, Cayman, Barbados, St. Lucia, Jamaica, Orlando and elsewhere."

The Bahamas is now in the process of bidding to host the 2004 Caribbean Cup. "And we"ll likely get it, too!" says Mr. Spicer.