My first knife throwing league/tourney

After owning a set of throwing knives for, like, a year and a half, I finally got the chance to use them in a league.

After a very open, loosey-goosey sort of invitation, I gathered up my road dawg OtterGuy to travel due east to Cherry Hill, New Jersey, joining a lil' gang of miscreants to huck a different shaped steel at Chopper's. There was an added bonus of the marathon being a sort of celebration for my-very-best-friend-forever Mel's birthday, so my going was a shoe in.

And, dear reader, I was surprised by the outcome. Well, okay okay - maybe not surprised I had fun, but surprised by the speed, relative ease, and nature of a knife throwing tourney as prescribed by the IATF.

Easy to pick up, even easier to throw

This might come as a shock, but I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Sure, I'd read the knife throwing rules. I had a reasonable expectation. But I hadn't done the ding dang thing until Saturday morning when we showed up. Fortunately, lots of people in the group of eleven also hadn't thrown in a league, so we were all able to muddle through together.

That being said - the muddling didn't happen for very long. Much like an overworked bartender on a Saturday night, there was only a very quick sort of muddle before we figured out how everything was supposed to work - and work it did. Matches were quick (and fun), and we managed to do a full 5 weeks plus a tourney and be done by like, 3 or 4 pm (after starting around 10). It never felt like it dragged, and overall it was a very fun sort of day.

Throwing without expectations

Now, I will admit to you: I did better than I was expecting. I will also admit that I finished second-to-last in the league and seventh in the tourney itself. So I'm far from a savant when it comes to hucking knives - but I also didn't care one lick how I did. It felt a lot like when I first started throwing axes, where I was just happy to be doing something fun and didn't much care about the result.

I ended up starting with the IATF-brand knives, but quickly found that the set Otter brought suited me better, so we swapped. After that, it was easy enough to get points and laugh at how poorly I did when going for clutch (though I did get a few, and even a premier clutch).

Anyway, I'm mostly writing this post to share some pictures and say I did the thing. If you haven't gone to a knife league yet, I'd highly recommend it (even if you're dead set on only throwing axes). It's a palate cleanser, goofy, and your axe-throwing skills translate pretty well, if my experience is any indication. For what it's worth, having now done it at least once, I can say it's a fun time, and I'm very excited to try it again.

Who knows, maybe I'll start a knife badger blog and start up a second--HAHAAAAAA no there's not chance of that. Holy shit I'm losing enough sleep and money with one website. Could you imagine? Sheesh.