Myself in a green knitted dress, hair in a ponytail, I am holding a dart aiming for the dart board which is with touching distance. The background is creme wallpaper with branches of holly.
Cerebral Palsy

Attempting to Play Darts

So here we go we’re at challenge 3 already! Which yet again challenged my fine motor skills. Out of all 4 challenges, this has to be the one I was most nervous about because darts has always been the one thing I’d avoided. Whenever my family play darts I normally have a few shots and miss then give up due to the fear of breaking something.

I got challenged to a game of 101 meaning I had 9 shots to get to 101 points which at first, I wasn’t sure about, knowing that I’d be so far off 101. I wasn’t feeling very positive, to begin with, and I would have been surprised if I managed to get one dart onto the board in 9 shots never mind manage to accumulate 101 points. However, after a few practice rounds, it was beginning to look more achievable and I managed to get to a stage where I was getting darts on the board just as many times as I was missing the board.

As you can see not every attempt was successful! I ended up hitting the wall and losing the darts a few times, but this is okay as this was never not going to happen. It’s still annoying though, for example, I would just manage to accumulate a few points by having numerous successful shots but then I’d just lose it and be back to hitting the wall and the piano. In fact, I reckon if I had gotten points for hitting the piano, I’d be at 101 easily!

Getting to 101 points within 9 shots was super hard, I was just glad whenever the dart made it on to the dartboard never mind the number of points, to be honest, I’d have been happy with no points and just making it onto the outer ring of the dart board! My highest score was 89 this may not be 101 but I’m still extremely happy with how this challenge went. I never thought that I’d be able to get 89 points so even though I didn’t technically complete the challenge I still felt like I was winning!!

I had so much fun doing this challenge many thanks to my auntie for letting my put holes in her walls! These challenges aren’t about me showing off by any means, these challenges are about having a go at activities that I’d normally avoid. With my disability, I guess, at times I can be quick to judge whether I can do something or not, this does not mean that I give up, it just means I try and save myself the from being in an awkward situation. I’d would have loved to have had this time practising to play darts sooner but I didn’t really want to make a scene in a pub and end up getting kicked out! I have learnt not to rule anything out and without sounding cheesy practice does make perfect as I went from not getting a dart anywhere near the board to scoring 89 points.

When it comes to a task such as darts perseverance has to be the key and over time, I will get to 101. I know that I’m never going to be a professional darts player but I not trying to be a professional darts player so who cares that I got 89 points. I certainly don’t and in fact, I look at this as an achievement, I always try and aim big but again you have to evaluate what ‘big’ is in every situation and in this case achieving 89 points is big. So I’d say challenge complete!! This challenge was definitely about having fun and I didn’t care what the outcome was I just enjoyed having a good time, I know I’ll never be the best at darts, so I just enjoyed the light-hearted moment. Don’t get me wrong the better I got the more determined I became but I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it.

Thank you for reading check out NSTP’S Facebook page for more photo’s and videos!

Georgia
@georgiavine4213
@GeorgiaVineOT

1 thought on “Attempting to Play Darts”

Leave a Reply Cancel reply