Darts ACT Secretary, Kathy Slusser, weights in on darts through the Covid period, and said she’s optimistic about the current darts climate in ACT.
How did COVID restrictions in ACT impact darts across the territory?
“We were not playing darts for six months. We started our summer season at the beginning of March and we played two games, before having to stop.
“We didn’t play again until the beginning of September, when we were allowed back into the clubs. We then started our winter competition in September, the summer competition was hence abandoned.
“We have just played our final round of the winter comp, and are about to go onto finals, so to fit in a full season since we resumed is a fantastic result!”
How did Darts ACT effectively communicate with members, clubs, and associations throughout the pandemic?
“We distributed our Covid updates through Facebook, and we also utilised the TeamApp very heavily. We also kept in email contact with our captains, and so we were fully in contact with our players.
“For the clubs, it was mostly what the ACT Government were putting out that we kept up to date with. Then as soon as clubs were able to have larger numbers back in, they contacted us and said ‘when can we start coming back’ which is why we got the season up and going again in September.
“Even now we still have restrictions in some of our venues, for instance, one venue can only take 36 people at a time. So that puts restrictions on the number of games that can be played out of there. We still are impacted, but not to the extent that it’s forced us not to play at all.
“Overall we’re only playing out of two venues at the moment, with maximum capacities of 36 and 48, respectively.”
What can members look forward to for the remainder of 2020 and heading into 2021?
“I’m hoping we can get back to a normal season, as normal as Covid will allow it. This includes tournaments, and it would be nice to get the Darts Australia ranking points up and running with the grand prix tournaments.
“We are currently running ACT tournaments, just to give back to our local members. The first one we had was a couple of weeks ago, it was really well attended, and we’re hoping to have another one in the beginning of December.
“We hope this will lead into next year’s DA tournaments and our own ACT competitions also.
“Our men are looking forward to having another Australian Championship next year, hopefully we can go ahead with it and get back to a Covid-normal.
“I think we’ve been lucky with our (participation) numbers still pretty good, and we’ve come out of it (the pandemic) with a positive light.
“A lot of our players played online (during the darts lockdown), which was good to get their hands in. But face-to-face darts is certainly the big drawcard with everybody wanting to get back into the community.”