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The inaugural EKDA Fordham Cup

This weekend saw the first ever EKDA Fordham Cup event take place at the academy. Head coach Andy Davis set it up in honour of the late, great Andy Fordham, who was kind enough to visit us a few years ago.

It was a great day of darts, with 32 players old and new joining in the tournament. It was a straight-in, double-out 501 format competition, with the first 2 rounds being best of 7 legs, the semi-final best of 9, and the final best of 11. To decide who threw first, the first player named would pull out a ball from a bag – if it was black, they got the throw but if it was red their opponent went first.

We were very lucky as Andy’s wife, the lovely Jenny Fordham, donated a trophy for this tournament, as well as a set of Andy’s darts. The 2 finalists, Jake Flanagan and Luke Milner, played great all day but it was Jake who took the victory, ensuring his name was the first to be etched onto the trophy.

We also had the first ever Viking Plate round, which saw Connor Forber and Jack Rozier meet in the final. Jack was the victor in that competition, though Connor was very unlucky as his point snapped during the match.

Well played everyone, we are sure Andy would have been very proud!

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EKDA becomes part of the JDC family

In another step forward for East Kent Darts Academy, our head coach, Andy Davis, has become a JDC accredited coach.

Alongside Natalie Johnson and Dean Chapman, parents of two of our longest-serving members, Andy was awarded his certification this week from the Junior Darts Corporation.

This will enable the academy to offer even more development opportunities for our talented young players.

The JDC work closely with GoDartsPro.com, who run courses designed to develop the skills of youth players, and now that we are part of the JDC family students can be registered onto our academy setup with GoDartsPro to start taking on their challenges and winning medals. Please get in touch with Andy, Natalie or Dean if this is of interest to you.

Our day at Unicorn

Two of our A Team, Kent County, and Team Unicorn players, Shane and Jess, were lucky enough to be invited along to Unicorn’s head office in Edenbridge. Here’s how they got on…

Our time spent at Unicorn for the day was extremely enjoyable and we experienced a good level of welcoming and so on!

First I was overwhelmed by the amount of darts equipment and prototypes there were which was really cool to look at and see all in one place. Shortly after we were welcomed by the man behind the business, Edward Lowy, who assured us he is available for us in the event he is ever needed which was very nice of him. Then we had a 15 minute practice, being allowed to pick any pieces of equipment we would like to try, which was really good to try the full range.

Soon after, Unicorn’s player coach came to see us and taught us all about the way darts are influenced by the way they are thrown, the way they are set up and showed us a few great bits of software that we can use in the future to get to the very top of our games.

We were very welcomed and enjoyed the day!!

Happy Treble 20 to our Head Coach, Andy!

Everyone at the Academy would like to wish our fantastic head coach, Andy, a very happy 60th birthday!

He does so much for the academy and helps everyone get better every week, and always with a big smile on his face, so we all hope you have a fantastic day and get spoiled rotten!

We hope you get a lovely, big, delicious birthday cake… and hope even more you make us one like that on Saturday!!

Happy Birthday Archer!

New league underway!

We have decided to start a league amongst the EKDA players that would like to enter it.

Every player has paid £2 to enter the East Kent Darts Academy Players League, and once everyone has played each other, the top 8 players in the league will enter a mini-tournament, with the finalist and semi-finalist splitting the prize money.

Players can play their league games during academy time, after the academy finishes, or even in their own time. Please make sure you let Andy or Debbie know your results.

There are 3 points on offer for every match you win, 2 for a draw, and 1 for a loss. On top of that, you gain a point for every leg you win.

You can view the league table here and keep an eye on the results here.

Good luck everyone!