What’s Your Passion? – Bull's-Eye

When Anne Kramer was 14, one of her six brothers joined a darts league and brought home darts and a board to practice. Because her family was "fiercely competitive," as Anne describes it, they soon began holding darts competitions in the spare room. Not long after that, Anne persuaded her brother to take her to her first tournament, where she won first place and was hooked for life. Twenty-seven years later, Anne is still competing in darts on the local, regional and national levels.

    Anne Kramer was singles champion at the 2007 San Diego Memorial Dart Tournament

The game of darts is known to be hundreds of years old and it’s speculated that it originated among soldiers throwing short arrows at the bottom of a wine cask or a cross-section of a tree trunk. As a competitive sport, darts is unique in several ways: the equipment required is reasonably inexpensive, it requires a relatively small amount of space to play and special clothing is not required. Age, gender, physical size, strength and endurance have almost no effect on a player’s ability. These factors combine to make darts the appealing and popular game it is today. As Anne points out, "It’s also one of very few competitive sports that you can practice regularly in your own home."

The national governing body for darts in the United States is the American Darts Organization. Anne is a volunteer member of the organization and serves as the Regional Director for Southern California. Each region hosts quarterly regional playoffs in which participants compete for a chance to play at one of the four annual National Playoffs tournaments hosted by the American Darts Organization.

Winners of two of the four National Playoffs get the opportunity to compete on the world stage in either the World Masters or the World Cup/America’s Cup, which are held on alternating years. Winners of the other two National Playoffs are crowned National Champions. This past year, Anne competed in the National Playoffs in Houston, TX for the World Masters event and in Austin, TX for a spot on the USA World Cup Team.

The American Darts Organization also has a national ranking system in place where players can earn points based on their performance in tournament singles events. The points are accumulated and tracked on a yearly basis. Since she began competing, Anne has ended the year ranked among the top 20 women players in the United States on several occasions.

"Due to the high cost of travel these days," says Anne, "I don’t get to compete nationally as often as I would like and my ranking reflects that. However, I am still listed as one of the top 50 women players in the USA."

Points are also tracked on a regional basis and Anne has had the distinction of being ranked the number one woman player in southern California for quite a few years in a row.

"I love this game," Anne says. "I enjoy competing a lot, but I also enjoy meeting new people across the country that share my passion for the game."

In fact, while competing at a tournament in Phoenix in 1984, Anne met a fellow player with whom she now shares a lot more than the passion for darts that brought them together.

The player Anne met was John Kramer, a world-traveling professional darts player who won gold and silver medals in the World Cup. John was also the first-ranked player in the USA and one of the top 10 players in the world throughout his career. John and Anne later married and have been together competing and enjoying the sport they love for 24 years.

  Anne and John Kramer after winning the men's and ladies singles titles at a California tournament. 

Anne invites associates who are interested in learning to play darts – or who already do play – to contact her. "I would love to meet other players who not only share the same passion, but who also work for the same great company!"