Teacher Has Soft Spot for Dart Games

For Joan Sullivan, like many dart players, the attraction to the pinpoint indoor sport started by happenstance.

“A few years ago a friend was competing in a dart game and I went to watch him,” said Sullivan, a seventh-grade teacher in a private Los Angeles school. “As it turned out, a team was short a player and they asked if I wanted to play.”

Today she is a regular league player and a member of the Moonspinners Dart Club, which promotes women in darts.

Although a formidable player who competes in tournaments and league play, Sullivan still considers herself a social player.

“I don’t have the time to put into practice and just like everything else, you have to put your time into practice to be good at darts,” she said in her Bostonian accent. “I’d love to be great at it. As a matter of fact, I’d love to just be good at it.”

That is an obvious understatement since she has been a member of the Tri-Cities All-Star Dart Team for the last two years.

Along with her penchant for dart competition she is attempting, with other club members, to attract more women to the sport as well as promote the game with youngsters.

“There are many more men than women playing darts, but there are some really great women shooters in the Orange County area,” said Sullivan, a Boston University graduate who enjoys watching all sports, especially hockey, which is popular at the university.

Sullivan believes dart playing is becoming more popular with women and will become even more attractive once payoffs in tournament play become bigger. The bigger payoff is one of the reasons there is bigger participation in tournaments by men.

“The men get bigger payoffs due to the number of players who pay entry fees,” she said, pointing out that far fewer women enter tournaments.

Aside from the competition, “dart playing attracts quality people,” she said, especially at King Arthur’s Pub in Westminster, where much of the competition is held and where she sometimes practices.

“It’s more like a proper English pub than anything else,” she said. “I guess you could call it a dart bar.”

The people she meets there are a change from the people she met while working at a Massachusetts detention center for hard-core delinquents.

“At first I loved the job. It was great, but much the same as teaching, it had low pay and high burnout,” said the Westminster resident.

Not only did she need a change of employment but a change of scenery, and she ended up teaching in Los Angeles.

This eventually led her to dart playing as a recreational outlet, which she and the other players hope will catch on with the younger crowd. Her club and others sponsor kid shoots, which are also held nationally.

One of those dart gatherings for children will be held in Phoenix from Thursday through Sunday.

“The object is to show them dart playing is fun,” said Sullivan, one of eight siblings but the only dart player among them.

“One of my sisters tried it, but she gave it up rather quickly,” she said.