Darts

Published by Publications Team | Filed under Darts

22^nd December 2008 signaled the start of the IHRG darts tournament. As always, the function hall in Hall 8 played host to the rest of the 15 halls in NTU for this event.

Before the start of this tournament, there was a buzz amongst the Hall 6 darts players and their aim to make it to the darts final this year. An overwhelming record high of 17 players attendance during one training, nightly darts practice in the TV room and on the corridors of Block 33, as well as, the “not-so-quiet” confidence of the darts captain, these signs were clearly pointing towards a good tournament for the Sixers’ darts team. The darts tournament starts of with a round-robin stage of 2 groups of 8 halls, where only the top 2 halls from each group will be able to proceed on to the semi-finals of the tournament. Our hall was placed in Group B, alongside last year’s finalist, Hall 9, semifinalists, Hall 7. Other opponents in Group B consisted of Halls 2, 4, 5, 15 and 16. Qualification for the semis will not be a walk in the park, as statistics has showed; you can only afford to lose at most 1 game to qualify within the top 2 at the end of the group stage.

Day 1, game 1, our opponents were hall 16. Despite a bout of some nervousness by the players, a simple yet effective pep talk by the team’s player cum bench coach, Jeffrey, to play to everyone’s best potential, certainly did the trick. The starting lineup consisted of Alex Chu, Karl, Kok Leong, Soo Huey and Kaiyan. Each player will have to win 2 boards out of the 3 that will be played with the opponent to earn a set point for our team. Our male players steamrolled their opponents, taking the first 3 sets with ease, without dropping a single board in the process. We will eventually overcome Hall 16 with a scoreline of 4-1 to kickoff our campaign with a good start. Game 2 pitted us against Hall 4. The starting lineup remained the same with the male players continuing to dominate their opponents with perfect 3-0 victories each. In the end, Hall 4 was dispatched with relative ease with another 4-1 victory. 2 convincing wins out of the first 2 games, it is no wonder the team is brimming with confidence as we headed into the second half of Day 1.

Game 3 and our opponent will be Hall 7, one of the seeded teams in Group B. The arrival of Vanessa meant a small reshuffling of our starting lineup with her replacing Kaiyan. Perhaps it was the fatigue settling in, or perhaps it was due to the longer than usual interval between Games 2 and 3, as our male players lost a bit of their steam coming into Game 3 with Kok Leong losing his set 2-1, whilst Karl and Alex Chu rued missed opportunities as well with narrow 2-1 wins over their opponents. Nonetheless, Hall 7 was overcame with yet another 4-1 score and our team was looking good, going into the fourth and final game for Day 1.

Game 4, our team took on the challenge of Hall 15 who looked like serious contenders for the top 2 spots having picked up a sensational victory over Hall 9 earlier in the day. Although we would eventually overcome Hall 15 with yet another 4-1 score, all the players agreed that 15 was perhaps the toughest opponents we have played so far. With that, Day 1 was concluded with our team sitting pretty on top of Group B with 4 wins out of 4. But we all knew that this group stage is far from being wrapped up. Day 2, our first opponents came in the form of Hall 2. Karl’s friendship with the Hall 2’s best player gave him a good insight of the strength of our opponents. After all, Hall 2 are the only one besides us to boast a perfect 4 wins out of 4 in Day 1. A victory against them will put us in a really good position to qualify as top of the group for the semis. As we predicted, it was really a tough game as we have to squeeze out a narrow 3-2 margin to beat Hall 2.

Our opponents for Game 6 did not give us an easy time as well, for our team was required to work for the win again, edging past Hall 5 with a 3-2 win. News soon filtered through that Hall 2 lost their game against Hall 7. This meant that we have already qualified as top of the group because both our nearest rivals, Halls 2 and 9 having already registered 2 losses, can no longer overtake us. This was certainly good news to us for we can afford to relax for a while and look forward to the semifinal game. Game 7, our opponents were Hall 9, last year’s finalist. For this last game, Jeffrey came in for Alex Chu and Kaiyan replaced Soo Huey. Although the outcome of this game bore no significance to us, we were reminded to focus as usual because beating Hall 9 will eliminate them from the tournament. However, when a hungry team meets a less-than-motivated team, most people will place their bets with the hungry team, in this case, Hall 9. Indeed, they swept past us, and it is only because of Kaiyan’s win, did we manage to escape a 5-0 trashing. The challenge now for the team is to forget about this loss and focus on the semifinal game with Hall 10.

It would seem that the loss to Hall 9 served to be a blessing in disguise. Our darts players were given a wake up call, that we are not invincible. This became apparent as we stormed past Hall 10 with a 5-0 scoreline to stake our claims as a strong contender for the championship. As expected, Hall 3 overcame Hall 9 to advance to the final with us. Although we were up against the defending champions, our players were not to be fazed by the occasion. Alex Chu and Karl both produced commanding performances to take down their opponents. With the score tied at 2-2, both halls turned their attention to the final game where Vanessa is still tied 1-1 with her opponent. However, we did not have to wait long to celebrate as Vanessa confidently threw her dart into the “double 8” area to win the last and deciding set to win the final for us.

With that, IHRG darts came to an end as the Hall 6 darts team swept all before them to take down the first Recreation Gold for Hall 6. All the late night trainings, competitive heads-up games between players, drills and online research has finally culminated into the Gold medal for our team. Not only that, this season our team produced arguably one of the best players of the tournament, in Alex Chu (8 wins in . Vanessa won her first gold medal with her first appearance in a recreation game for Hall 6 and Captain Karl made good his proclamation that the darts team will be the first team to clinch a gold medal for Hall 6. To end off, the darts team would like to thank their captain, Karl, for the trainings he conducted, Kok Leong, for his online research, managers Alex Chu and Yoke Hwa for their phonecalls and smses, Jeffrey, for his coaching and scouting on match days 1 and 2, and the players, Vanessa, Soo Huey, Kaiyan and Yosef for their commitment to the team. We would also like to thank President JingLun and Rec Directors Eddie and Kaiyang for their support for the team throughout the season. Last but not least, the year 1 players who have been diligently attending training throughout the season.

Continue to train hard for the next season! Ovia!

Story By: Tan Kok Leong

Click HERE to view the Photos for Day 2
Click HERE to view the Video of Part 1
Click HERE to view the Video of Part 2