Axe Throwing Enthusiasts,
Another fun week in the books and some pretty exciting and impressive things to discuss:
Edgewater
- Black Metal Axe AKA Walden Cox achieved his first 64 yesterday while throwing his makeup games with Brad. This marks the second thrower in any of our leagues to hit this milestone and we’re thrilled to hand out another one of those patches!
- Ian joined the 50 club, while Brad (57), Kim (49) and Jim (47) all set personal records this week.
- There was an audience! Kitty’s mom played the role of cheerleader for this Wednesday’s league – please feel free to bring friends at any of our leagues to watch.
- Makeup Throws: Alexander Boehm and Chris Van Gurp (4 games behind), Matt Barela (12 games behind)
Marietta
- Noah impressively joined the elusive 60-club, knocking on the door of that 64.
- Jordan had her first 50, with that Marietta now has 24/33 throwers that have made it to 50 this season with several just a couple points away.
- In Duals, Team Tweedles caught all the way back up with a 7-0 start before Lucipurr took them down in their final match of the night. Oh so close to a perfect night.
- Makeup Throws: Colton Askew, Marty Lippert, Taylor Wheaton (4 games behind), Ninja/Jesse (7 games behind), Aaron Rayborn (12 games behind)
The Works
- Team Lockjaw was Rippin’ 6’s all night long in the absence of Rippin’ 6’s.
- We’re checking with WATL to try to figure out some of the IT challenges that this league experienced. For whatever reason, Tom and Charles are both showing 21 games played and that did not happen. This app is a joy.
- Lighter attendance week, will be back to full strength next week from our side.
- Makeup Throws: Colton Askew & Evan Suttle (4 games behind)
Makeup Throws
We made a change at Marietta this past week and are considering it for other leagues as well. Some throwers in Marietta (33 throwers in league) came to me last week and mentioned that make-up throws being added to the normal week was causing league to last longer – makes sense, more games = more time. So what we did was instituted a plan that at 6pm the day of league, throwers that need to make up games can come in and compete against other throwers. If that is not an option, they can throw non-competitive (NC) matches. Each thrower is allowed up to 8 NC matches per league season to receive WATL circuit points. Now during each week, we will not have any thrower play more than 4 matches to keep the night moving. We will try to be as flexible as possible and for instance, we did make-up throws in the VIP room while other matches were happening. I would be curious to hear feedback from other league throwers if you like this idea.
Axe Throwing Theory
It may be a minute before I write another one of these, but I wanted to get a little vulnerable and talk about my own journey of growing my game and I have had a couple of eye opening experiences since I shifted to WATL that I feel like may be relatable to some.
Cut the Comparison – I suffer from being overly competitive. I purposefully chose the word suffer because I believe that it does not make me a better thrower – being overly competitive makes me worse. In the past (and present), I have paid attention to what was going on beside me too closely. If a competing thrower would get excessively loud or step in the lane before me (now scored a foot fault), it would completely throw me off and sometimes unrecoverably so. I appreciate Wes helping me come to a better appreciation of this by pointing it out. While I’d love to say that I have it under control, I don’t and probably won’t for a while. My goal is to become singularly focused on my score and ignoring what’s going on beside me and thank you to Wes for being willing to give me this pointer.
I believe that for me to take the next step, I am going to need to work on my own mental strength and that is my primary focus. Cut out the noise and play my own game.
Rippin’ 6’s – This one is related to throwing and my new favorite league phrase. Now that I am achieving an average of 49, I’m feeling pretty good about myself – my game took a step in the right direction recently for the first time in at least a year. I have taken in a lot of different opinions that I have listened to about what to do next to grow my score and I encourage others who have an opinion to write about it and be featured in future newsletters. What I have decided on (at least this week) is to lean in on the 6. Looking at the data last week, I was surprised to see that I have hit the 3rd most bullseyes at The Works league (72), yet also a high amount of 4’s (55). I see an opportunity to add more points to my score by turning 4’s into 5’s and then eventually 5’s into 6’s. I plan to continue to hold the killshot’s back for a while until I can see progress with the 6. I’m not saying that I am not planning to practice killshots, turns out Stairway to Eleven is my new favorite game to play and use as a way to practice.
Food for thought and I’d love to hear from you on what you’re thinking about to take your game to the next level.
Go Braves.