Match Reports - Week 17 - 8th. Jul. 2008

POP's traveled to Malone's to face off with Snipers last night. With summer travel a lot of POP's usual players were out of town and so POP's added yet one more girl to the team to bring us up to 6 players. JoAnn immeditately showed she was going to fit in perfectly with the rest of POP's girls by showing up dressed in POP's recommended distracting manner and further, by downing two shots of tequila before the match even started. As the only man on the team last night Wes had the enviable job of keeping the girls under control and after darts was forced to dance with each one to keep the men down stairs at bay! Anyway, back to darts: Allen came closest to the bull to start the team game and opened with a 108 to put Snipers into an early lead. Snipers extended the lead to over 200 and stayed there until Iris threw her best darts of the season with a triple 20, triple 19 and single 20 for a solid 137 and putting POP's back in contention. Snipers missed a couple of chances at a closing double and POP's managed to pull out the game with a double 8 by Wes. The two rounds of doubles were evenly split with mostly solid darts but nothing outstanding except a marathon 1st singles game between JoAnn and Wang that threatened to last until sunrise and a second round singles game between JoAnn and Sun where JoAnn played exceptionally well for a first timer and even closing with a first dart - double 16. After singles score: 7:6 in favor of POP's. Doubles match ups put Wes and JoAnn against Sun and Wang while Vivian and Joy played YaYa and James. JoAnn once again showed her stuff by tossing in a first dart double 9 to win the game while Joy and Vivian combined a lot of high scoring darts to take their doubles match. In the 3rd doubles game Allen and Sam were too tough for Tracy and Iris and quickly finished off an excellent round of darts. Score after doubles: 11:8 in favor of POP's. With MM being the decider between a tie and a win there was a lot of pressure on both teams to hit the mark. Wes started off by closing 20's but Allen topped that by closing both 20's AND 19's. Vivian threw only 1- 19 allowing YaYa to put the first points on the board and giving Sniper's a 38 point lead. Things went back and forth after that making this one of the closest MM games I have ever played in. POP's managed to tie the score up at 54 but then the point lead traded back and forth until all but bulls and doubles were closed for both teams. At that point Snipers had bulls closed while POP's had 2 bulls and POP's had doubles closed while Snipers had 1 double. With the score 127 to 112 in favor of Snipers, Tracy hit a third dart double 20 giving POPs the lead at 152 to 127. Sniper's then hit another double and YaYa hit a bullseye to make the score 152 to 152. Wes finished off the bulls closing off Snipers ability to score and needing 1 double to make the MM the first tie I have ever seen. Luckily for POP's, Snipers missed the double on a couple of throws and Joy came to the line and hit a third dart double 6 to give POP's the win. One of the closest and best MM games I have ever participated in. With all the games being so close and competitive it is almost a shame to have anyone lose but Sniper's were great sports and as usual Malone's was a great venue for darts. Wes