Flights Pub keeps the love alive
By Ty Hughes
Heather welcomed seventeen teams to Flights Pub on July 5th for their $500 Added Independence Shoot. She took her post at the big, main table in the back to oversee the action at the boards and maintain the charts effectively. This seems to be a popular hangout area for the players between matches as they crowd around the table socializing with friends and like-minded enthusiasts.
They were supposed to have a big barbecue earlier that day with Cliff and Mikey at the grill, but some scumbag allegedly stole the entire stock of ribs stored in the back ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú not a friendly gesture when someone puts forth a special effort to provide for others. People can be truly ruthless and unconscionable sometimes. In my history of covering events and introducing new pub owners, I’ve never heard so many raving reviews of a single owner as I do about Ty Franzer, owner of Flights. Every time I visit, I get an earful about how much the players love this guy and how awesome he is. He puts complete trust in his associates and they bend over backward to please him. I think this was covered in chapter one of “How to win friends and influence people”. People like this don’t deserve to be wronged in this way.
Anyway, that was not enough to quell the spirits of those in attendance. The party must go on, right? And that it did. Jackie was her animated self, whom we’ve all come to love and admire over the years. This girl is always smiling, no joke!
Willie and Kelly were hangin’ out, Trish and Teri, Dave and his best girl, Alli. Marie Keller was even there wearing her signature smile too. If ever there was someone who smiles with her whole face ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú that’s Marie.
Sometime during the tournament, Jackie broke out a big box and began handing out personalized shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies and caps for all Flight’s regular league players who earned their rewards just by playing darts out of Flights. Points are awarded to players just for showing up and entering the tournaments and playing league. Their commitment definitely paid off for these fortunate recipients of this cool merchandise. Just one more reason to get on a team at Flights.
So anyway, Joe Mathias was partnered up with Larry, who is rated a MC3, and was completely on fire that night. They knocked out three Grand Masters to take third place in the tournament that night, plus eighty bucks!
Then it came down to Floyd and Renee, who were sitting in the Driver’s Seat, versus Brian and Frankie who sailed through the Loser’s Bracket to meet up with Floyd and Renee for a rematch. This time, the results would be different and Brian and Frankie left as champions and three hundred bucks richer. Although Floyd and Renee did themselves proud, taking a respectable second place and $220 in cash.
The tournament was lots of fun as usual when visiting Flights. But even more fun were the characters and personalities. Everybody’s got a story to tell. Sometimes they don’t even have to say a word and yet the whole story comes pouring out. You just have to be a good listener. Flight’s players are awesome people and deserve a top shelf in annals of time. Their faith in each other has been truly tested over the years and somehow they keep rising to the top of it, stronger and better than before.
Prepare yourselves for the ever-popular and longstanding tradition of Hot August Nights, Flights’ signature shoot, their biggest event of the year, coming August 22 and 23. Plan on coming out for this one. Ty’s got plenty of changes in store for this year’s event. He’s probably going to pear it down to just two nights this year, Friday and Saturday. And Friday may end up being a Parity shoot in order to promote equality and fairness among the participants. Plus, this way, the points will be distributed more evenly from the get go, giving everybody a shot in the finals. Make it a point to be at Flights Pub on August 22nd and 23rd for the biggest event of the year!
