An idea I have tossing around in my mind. It's based off the Dart Masters in AZ. What would you think if we took people that shot say above a 24.0 in '01 and made a separate league for them. One that isn't handicapped and they could beat up on one another. We could give them a name similar to what the Dart Masters have and have the league and sponsors support them entering tournaments and travel arrangements, and have them suited up in a shirt that reflects their efforts.

The reason I toss out ideas like this, is because our league, well now both of them, are handicapped based. There's no incentive to push to be better and in fact there a huge penalty for getting too high. But if there's a reward to it, then, maybe we'll get more people to throw their darts.

I know, the big argument is that we leave out the core of our players, but understand, this "core" doesn't give up the 300 points in '01 and aren't the ones that mainly compete in every dart tournament we have, or travel to Las Vegas for our Nationals. People only get better by playing better people and putting in the practice time.

It's not that Alaska doesn't have the talent or ability to do well in national events. We normally grab our share of the checks and even sneak in a few trophies here and there. It's that, some may say it's fair to get a 300 point handicap, but if you practiced every other day to get better, and then get to the point where you give up a handicap like this, then have some one smack a low ton [0] on ya, you'll see how we feel. At the current moment there's no reward what so ever for our darters to strive to be better. So our averages do not reflect our over all ability or skill. They play in leagues that have huge risks to getting their averages too high. Many players have stopped playing due to frustration on both sides of this story. Isn't it time that we do some thing to reward excellent efforts and play?