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Well less than a week to go. Team registration is closed, the Pros bracket is complete and every coach seat is filled for the Pub Crawl of St. Louis.
The Championship returns to St. Louis and will be held at Renaissance Hotel next to Lambert Airport. Dates are August 4-9. We’ve added a Tuesday night blind draw. This non-American Dart League (ADL) event will be open to any ADA member. Tuesday afternoon we’ve filled the bus with members and guests for the tour of Anheuser-Busch, the Pub Crawl at Laclede’s Landing and a tour of the famous Gateway Arch.
Things start warming up on Wednesday. Captains begin checking their team in at 10:00 AM with the Captains Meeting scheduled for noon. Registration also opens for the non-American Dart League Cricket singles and doubles Warm-Up events. Wednesday is also when ADA Pros compete in the third Pro Darters Championship. This singles competition is 501 best of three, best of three sets. So in addition to the Warm-Up events attending Amateurs will see some great darts thrown.
The National Championship officially begins on Thursday morning with the Team and Express League. Sponsored by Budweiser it is the only dart contest in the world that features both soft-tip and steel-tip competition. Soft tip play will take place on the Shelti Cougar Eye-II machine. Steel tip action will be held on Sportcraft World Pro bristle dartboards. Thursday wraps up with the third of the draw doubles (Fri-Sat are the remaining). Singles are on Friday and it is also the only dart championship in the USA that seeds competitors in Singles competition. The top 16 men and top 8 women from the steel-tip and soft-tip categories from the American Dart League are rated according to the cumulative scores for every dart thrown in league play. That’s a total of 96 seeded players who enter with a guaranteed share of the prize purse. First place seeded players receive commemorative medals and cash plus a public recognition on stage at the National Championship. The American Dart League doubles are scheduled for Saturday. Triples are scheduled on Sunday. A couple of new events wrap up the Championship; the Division Representative Singles (our way of saying, “thanks”) and the last non-ADL event is the Open Doubles in the afternoon.
If you are flying into St. Louis the Renaissance has a complimentary shuttle at the airport. Harrah’s is also cooperating providing shuttles to and from their casino throughout the Championship. Atlanta Darts returns and will have darts equipment at the darts store. Brackets for the Team and Express League will be electronically drawn at the Championship.
We look forward to seeing you next week here in St. Louis.
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