“Tornado Alley” Is An Unwarranted Indictment of TPA

Commentary by Steve Matthews  - League Coordinator, Twin Ports Amusements

 I take it that your commentary "Tornado Alley" is directed at me and Twin Ports Amusements, since we are the only local operator to offer sanctioned leagues! Scheduling is always a problem but I do take in effect all the criteria that you stated when I put together schedules. In a perfect world it would be nice to accommodate all teams to play everyone the same amount of times but as a league coordinator I have to make both the players and bar owners happy. I have to take in effect that there are various holidays and special events that come up throughout the year that have to be scheduled around. If I took all the Packer and Viking fans requests to not schedule matches on those specific dates their team(s) appear on Monday Night Football I would run into even more problems. With every schedule I try to make it feasible for all the teams to have equal amount of home games and away games. I also try to make it that teams are not away from their home bar for three consecutive weeks!

Also when I have schedules ready to go for the first week of the season I do get teams or bar owners that want to add a team or two to a league. This in-turn will not only affect that single league but can affect that whole night of leagues, not only darts but pool leagues, or even cribbage leagues that are run on those nights!

Next, the insistence of how to categorize teams into 'A', 'B' and so forth. There are a lot of players that are able to play in the 'A' division and want to become better. On the other hand there are many more players that want the night out with their friends and are not looking to be the elite player(s) in the area. I have been in contact with many players that would rather quit if they cannot play with their buddies and are not looking to play as competitive as the 'A' league(s). I do try to find the highest PPD/MPR in the past two years when I begin to categorize teams for the upcoming season. If I have no stats on a player I take the stats of the teammates and go from there. Also if I have any of them with Eagle stats I will use the highest from them if need be.

Every season the team captain receives a copy of the rules. In the rule book there is a list of what league costs are taken out from league fees. Sanction fees are taken out once a year, and paybacks are lower in the fall than in the winter because of it. We have kept the league fees at $3.00 per player for more than 10 years. In this time we have seen increases in expenses across the board. Take the increase in Postage this past summer; postage has gone up 6 cents since I've been here. I have some leagues that have increased their league fees throughout the years for $3.00 to $4.00 to $4.50 per player so that their expenses do not take away from their paybacks, but I have not pushed for an increase in league fees in the Twin Ports area.

I do take great offense to a lot in this article, (Tornado Alley) when Twin Ports or the words sanctioned leagues appears it has a direct correlation to myself, since we are the only operator to offer sanctioned leagues and I am the one who puts the work into these leagues. I have always tried to be helpful by giving your website (Superior Darts) information on tournaments, results from NDA events, Arrowhead Dart Leagues stats and I do refer players to your website whenever I can. I do not question whether your website is to be helpful for area dart players to get information, or if it has been created for you to be "THE MAN" in darts in the Duluth/Superior area. Our leagues are an opportunity for players to play in leagues, have a chance to grow as players and have the opportunity to play in MOMA & MTA state tournaments or even the NDA Team Dart Tournament in Las Vegas along with the local weekly and weekend tournaments. I have always tried to have a working relationship with you (Superior Darts) by providing information to you when you've asked and when I thought that players should know what is coming up or happening regarding darts in the area.

I do feel that providing information to your website is beneficial to the players and I hope that we can keep on helping each other. Coordinating leagues is not just coming up with schedules that work, with the MOMA, MTA & NDA Deadlines for sanctioning, tournament entries, statistic archiving, not to mention trying to coordinate around the various other type of leagues that are being played in the local bars throughout the fall and winter. Also addressing player(s) concerns and other league responsibilities outside Twin Ports this Job does take a lot of time to run it efficiently.

Steve Matthews

July 19, 2002

( Jarrod Walker replaced Matthews as TPA League Coordinator in 2005)