Home Plate Tavern; Tacoma, WA – Steel-Tip Darts at the Home Plate

By Bob Ross, President, South Sound Dart Association (SSDA)

The Home Plate Tavern in Tacoma has become a Mecca for local and regional steel-tip players. For the past five years, Hudy and the gang have hosted and run the only ADO-sanctioned tournaments in Western Washington: the South Sound Open in March, and the Tacoma Open in July.

January 15-17 we introduced a new format for the first Tacoma Open Singles tournament. Saturday morning, 26 players competed for the top eight seeds in the Main Event, and in the afternoon, 20 players shot for the remaining eight slots. The Main Event Sunday morning featured a “progressive” bracket, with matches increasing from best of seven to best of 13 for the final.

Advancing to the semi-finals were Kevin Luke, Brian Smith, John Husman and myself. Brian dispatched Kevin 6-1, throwing three 180’s in the match. In my match against John, it came down to the 11th leg, and I just missed a 120 checkout, and didn’t get to shoot at the 20 I had left.
In the final, Brian jumped out to a 3-1 lead; John took the fifth leg with a nifty D16, D16 finish, and didn’t look back, winning five of the final six games. For their fine darts, John earned $520 and Brian $250.

We ran two other events over the weekend: Friday night was blind draw doubles, won by Alvin (playing in his first tournament EVER with darts he bought THAT DAY!) and Mike Luke, coming back from a 2-0 deficit in the final to beat Steve Arionus and Debbie Scott. In the Open Doubles Saturday night, Kevin Luke and David Foster won the final 3-2 over Tyler Hayne and yours truly.

Great darts, everybody! For upcoming events at the Home Plate, check out SSDA’s website at www.tacomadarts.com.