4x7 Cup; Round 1

Cloud 9 vs. Waterfront

By Tamra Easley

On a blustery Saturday in early November, Bellingham 's Waterfront Tavern rolled out their own Mitch Longstretch, Kenny Vos, Eric Leverson and Jeff Scheremeta to meet the visiting Cloud 9 team of Tim Stemm, Steve Carpenter, Brett Bitterman and Will Campbell. This match officially opened up the November cup play by shooting for the 4x7 in beautiful Bellingham , Washington .

The Waterfront Tavern is a quaint little bar with a warm, friendly and cozy atmosphere located downtown on the boardwalk. There is a walk-up window available streetside to grab your food on the go, but everyone's invited to stop in and enjoy the table seating in the back that overlooks the harbor.

The food is just plain delicious! I had the Top Sirloin, mashed potatoes and veggies, served on real plates, further adding to the “home-like” feel and definitely worth the quick drive north. Besides the awesome environment and food, The Waterfront has a full service bar, four dart boards, 32 Pull Tabs, two big screen TVs, coupled with three smaller screens, and a digital jukebox with a sweet sound system. They have dart tournaments on Fridays for both darts and Texas Hold ‘Em. For those songbirds, there is karaoke every Saturday night.

All the guys brought the heat from the very start of the 4x7 Cup match and had a great time shooting together with compliments and teasing spread all around. This was the first challenge cup shot by all of the members of the Cloud 9 team, though the nerves weren't reflected in their darts.

Game six was the first high scoring game. Cloud 9 was down by three numbers, with only the bull closed for their team and many hundreds of points behind. A slew of hat tricks later, the Cloud came back from bleak odds to come from behind and win the game! Eric took out game eight with a beautiful 149 (T19, B, T14) and made it look effortless, not pausing to even think about the next dart thrown. Mitch dropped the first High Ton of the match in game 10.

Waterfront's owner, Lynn, along with Brad kept their guys company as did the various patrons at the bar, who proved to be knowledgeable about the game of darts, talking with all of the guys quite a bit. Justine, Ryan and Valerie braved the traffic to come up and support their Cloud 9 boys.

This was a good match with most of the games coming down to the set-ups for the outs, the most spectacular of which was shot by Will when he shot a 157 in game 23 to give Cloud 9 the first shot at the out. They took advantage and took the game out.

Fittingly, the dart coordinator of Cloud 9, Tim Stemm, took the final game out with a Double Bull and a Single Bull to bring the 4x7 Cup back to Kent 's Cloud 9.

Great shooting, guys!

4x7 Cup; Round 2

Cloud 9 vs. Wah Long

By Tamra Easley

A couple of weeks later, after Cloud 9 headed back south with their newly-claimed trophy, the 4x7 Cup was back on the move. Cloud 9 hosted Wah Long for another 4x7 challenge. This was the greatest comeback I have seen in the one year plus that I have been coordinating these cups.

On Saturday, November 18, the Ohio/Michigan and contentious Apple Cup games were not the only big games being offered, despite their popularity. Cloud 9's Steve Carpenter, Will Campbell, Brett Bitterman and Tim Stemm hooked up with Wah Long's Rico Gaines, Brett Comstock, Tony Gutierrez and Nico Fidow, shooting for the 4x7 Cup.

These are two of the biggest dart houses in the Central Sound area. Both locations finished in the Platinum level for team counts in the Medalist program, which places them in the top five throughout the entire country.

This 4x7 Cup match was a competitive one from the beginning, being that they guys are all well known to each other from league and tournament play. Amit, Ryan, Justin and Valerie came out to support Cloud 9; Jimmy Tham and Kevin came down into the valley to root on the Wah Long effort to extract the 4x7 from the Cloud. Melissa was behind the bar supplying the great service that the Cloud is known for.

The guys had a blast shooting this match, enjoying the competitiveness, congratulating good darts and collectively groaning on the near misses, yelling out, “I thought you had that one,” and “Oh, right there!”

Wah Long won three of the four opening games before the Cloud opened up and showered them with eight straight wins, eliminating any doubt as to why they hold the 4x7 title. Wah Long put a stop to the deluge by winning the next six straight games to tighten up their scoring deficit, thus starting the match all over again – this time making it a race to win eight games instead of seventeen.

During one of the stacked 901 games, Brett shot and left a round score of 777; Tim teased him by saying, “Who do you work for, Boeing?”

Wah Long didn't stop at their six-game win streak either; they tacked on another four to make it a total of 10 straight games. Cloud 9 put the brakes on that train to show that they weren't prepared to turn over their cup so easily, pulling a bit closer at 13-10. But the determination of Wah Long proved to be too much.

From being down 3-9, the Wah Long team went on to win 14 of the next 16 games to take the 4x7 home to Burien.

Congratulations, guys, for the biggest comeback in the history of the new era of the challenge cups!