A St. Albert darts player is throwing bull’s-eyes in select company at the Winmau World Masters.
Michelle Spicer is among the 10 Canadians and 145 qualifiers in the female division at the 45th annual British Darts Organization tournament starting Wednesday at Bridlington Spa in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England.
“It’s surreal to think that I’ve gone from just playing little local jitneys to world calibre,” said Spicer, a serious competitor since 2009. “It’s butterflies, absolute butterflies.”
Spicer, 57, is targeting a semifinal spot “to be on the stage” in the world’s longest running darts major.
“I just want to be there. I want to experience that,” Spicer said. “I know I’m supposed to say I want to win and I really want to win. I want a Canadian woman to be known. There is one fellow, Jeff Smith (of New Brunswick), and he went on stage (at the 2015 and 2016 BDO worlds) and his name is well known worldwide and I'd like a Canadian woman to be like that.”
The top four female seeds are former champions Lorraine Winstanley, Lisa Ashton and Deta Hedman of England and Anastasia Dobromyslova of Russia in the cut-throat single elimination draw.
“That's going to be quite different,” Spicer said of the sudden-death format. “Here, we will often play a round robin but there you’re told in advance where your board is, (the venue) is huge, and you know the time that you’re supposed to show up at that board. You get a few darts to practice and that’s it. Here, when we’re playing tournaments you’ve had all that practice in the round robin and then you go into the knockouts but where it becomes difficult there is being able to warm up quickly and I was told that when you go in the morning there is a lineup of people at one board and that’s your practice and you might get three darts.”
Spicer is up for the challenge of a lifetime.
“You know you have the ability, you've reached that point, now it’s the mental stage meaning you have to be positive, you have to be calm and you have to play one game at a time,” said the respiratory therapist for 38 years who is based at Royal Alexandra Hospital. “I’ve learned in this game don’t play the person, play the board and stay focused. Focus is a huge thing actually, especially for somebody like me who has got a little bit of ADD (attention deficit disorder) so what I do for a living I’m always so calm in situations so I’m trying now to bring that to what I do as a player.”
Spicer’s main strength is “learning my outs” which is the ability to calculate the score after every throw.
“Math in this game is a huge asset because you have to double out. You start at 501 and you work your way down to that double so that part of the game was, I would have to say the hardest to learn and it is for just about every dart player. Learning your finishes, it’s called.
“If you stop and think you lose your momentum, your rhythm,” Spicer added. “My husband (Gerald) and Mike Dwyer, who has been playing for years and is a very, very good dart player, said, ‘Michelle, there is one thing you've really got to keep working on is just that rhythm, knowing where you’re at and if you miss you've got to know where your next dart is going to be.’”
All the numbers added up for Spicer at the Main Event world masters’ qualifier in Saskatoon in April.
“There were 30 odd women and I won it. I played really well that day,” said Spicer, who knocked off her friend, Linda Wilder, a former Edmonton resident and St. Albert Painters Guild member who was victorious at the Greater Vancouver Open in March for a berth at the world masters.
The winners of selected tournaments all over the world received invites to the world masters.
“It was unbelievable,” Spicer said. “I said to her, ‘Wouldn't it be something if we could go together this year?’ And in the final I ended up beating her. We always go back and forth – I win, she wins – but that day I beat her.”
The achievement outranks another personal best for Spicer.
“I made Team Alberta for the first time last year. The year before I was an alternate which means you come in ninth and they only take the top eight. I tried many times to make Team Alberta and that was my goal,” said the 2017 and 2018 Team Alberta player at nationals who was ranked ninth in Canada and fourth in Alberta for the season that ended April 30, 2018.
Spicer is a familiar face in the Edmonton City Dart League, which runs Thursday nights out of four Royal Canadian Legions, including the St. Albert branch, and the Edmonton Mixed Singles Darts League.
“We have so much fun and good laughs. There is competition but they're such great people from all walks of life,” said Spicer, noting how the darts community assisted in fundraising efforts to send her to the world masters. “The support is just phenomenal.”
Spicer also travels throughout Canada to compete in various ranked dart tournaments and has competed in Las Vegas and Barbados while honing her skills.
“It’s all about practice, practice, practice,” said Spicer, who plays online in the Webcam Darts Association against players around the world. “You also learn a lot about yourself. You learn that you need to have the confidence first of all and once you win one you realize that you've got it in you and you can do it.
“It teaches you, too, a lot about real life, what’s outside of this. You just feel so confident what you’ve achieved. Whatever you want to do, you can.
“But I’ll be honest, when I come home from work sometimes it’s nice to unwind by throwing at a board. It’s very rhythmic, very soothing and relaxing.”
Spicer (nee Cruse), a St. Albert Catholic High School alumna, was introduced to the sport of firing small pointed missiles with feathers or plastic flights at a circular board marked with numbered segments in 1986 when Gerald asked her to join him for an evening of darts with other throwers, after work as a ski patroller. They got married the next year.
“They taught me that night. I watched them and they let me throw and right away I said, ‘This is fun. I like this.’”
As for the stereotype of the dart player with a pint in one hand to calm the nerves while lining a shot, “You can’t have too many of those or you lose the edge,” Spicer said.
