"Play your game" - with this campaign, Stadtwerke Gießen supports clubs and institutions that promote sport, especially among young people. The Dart Club Cartoon Gießen e. V. recently received a set of polo shirts for its newly formed youth team.
Darts is on the rise. Mighty Mike, Phil "The Power" Taylor, Raymond "Barney" von Barneveld and many other stars of this sport have become well-known in Germany at the latest since the major professional tournaments were broadcast on free TV. So it's no wonder that young people are also enthusiastic about throwing the compact darts weighing up to 50 grams from 2.37 metres onto a disc that is divided into 82 squares, some of them tiny, with different values. This is exactly what the Dart Club Cartoon Gießen e. V. Giessen's first pure darts club, officially founded in 1987. In January 2018, the club launched its youth work together with the Marburg soft-darts league. Since the first training session, around 20 children and young people aged between eight and 21 have been coming to practise under supervision. There is even a lower dartboard for the under-eight-year-olds to make their first attempts at throwing easier. Marko Kießig and Frank Patolla lead the two-hour youth training sessions, which take place on the second and fourth Sunday of every month. Both have many years of experience in youth work.
Training takes place in the Kupferkanne in Giessen. The pub is also the official competition venue for the DC Cartoon in the Hessian Darts Association and other leagues. Thanks to the great support of the owner Josef Tok, it is possible to offer the youngsters optimum training conditions for steel and soft darts.
Although there are also team competitions in darts, it is essentially an individual sport. Therefore, players usually train individually. As a result, members of DC Cartoon can be found in their favourite pub practically every day. And this has already led to respectable successes: in 2005, the club won the state championship with the team and became Hessian cup winners. They have also won many individual titles, from world champion in soft darts in Las Vegas to German tactics champion in doubles, a variant of steel darts. The club is also represented in a number of leagues, including the Bundesliga in the field of soft darts. "This experience and these successes are a great basis for the newly established youth branch," says Stephanie Orlik, who is responsible for sponsorship at SWG. "With the polo shirts, we want to help motivate the kids so that they stick with it in the long term. This project fits perfectly into the "Spiel' Dein Spiel" concept."
Micky Macke, the first chairman of DC Cartoon Gießen, was naturally delighted that his application to "Spiel' Dein Spiel" was crowned with success. "As a truly marginal sport, we find it very difficult to find sponsors. All the more reason for us to thank SWG for their generous support," explained Micky Macke on the occasion of the handover.
By the way: darts not only trains coordination. As in other sports, the coaches also teach fair play and other important things - such as patience, discipline and perseverance. These are the best prerequisites for success in tournaments and competitions - whether organised by the club itself or at a German Youth Championship. Young darters also practise their maths. Because in order to play successfully, it is important to know how many points are still needed to win, at the latest towards the end of each set. And with which combination of hits this number of points can be achieved with three darts. Not an easy endeavour.
Further information is available at
<link typo3/www.swg-spieldeinspiel.de>www.swg-spieldeinspiel.de