Around a hundred current and former university students will compete in the Summer Showdown this Friday evening in Rotherham, in the new event’s debut. The Showdown, taking place at the Magna Centre, is in collaboration with the United Kingdom Darts Association (UKDA), who will be hosting their National Finals at the Centre this coming weekend. The format will be a round robin followed by a knockout competition, with the action underway from 6.30pm. Significantly, the tournament will not just feature current students from across the UDUK system but also graduates from up to the last five years. Organising and compèring the event will be Lancaster and Open University graduate Simon Rimington, who now works as an official for UKDA and the Amateur Darts Circuit (ADC). On the new competition, Rimington said: “The collaboration is the result of one of the darting roles I have moved on to. I am the stage referee for the UKDA, and when the committee were seeking to relaunch the Big Weekender, I suggested the fact that UKDA could access up 72 boards.” “As such we involved CEO Colin Savage in the conversation, who offered the Friday evening to use the UKDA finals weekend venue. Last year, the Friday night hosted a warm up singles but in its absence this year, university students past and present have the chance to put on a show.” And given Simon’s history in the UDUK, it is an opportunity which cannot be missed. “Given my past, I’m very excited for the event. It will be the biggest venue ever used by UKDA.” “In the pandemic, I ran a lockdown series of longer form events to follow on from the initial Friday night events that [former President] Michael Kelly ran. I tried to recognise that giving people some flexibility over games would keep the players going and keep enough around to resurrect UDUK and the clubs once things opened back up.” “Long before this, I was involved in putting together the first national championship, starting with regional qualifiers and ultimately a finals day hosted at Lancaster. I captained Lancaster to victory in the inaugural 2008 Championships, which we retained in Liverpool in 2009 and then in 2010 I played as alumni in a third win at York.” “I continued to play singles as alumni with my best runs being last 16 in 2009 and 2014. My return to studying in 2015 meant I was again eligible until graduating in 2018. I have remained involved in an advisory role to help committees since.” He continued: “I am always happy to lend my experience to university events and the new pathways programme is an exciting one. There are a number of UKDA players who started in university darts and Kirk Bevins, PDC referee, started as a York player and subsequently refereed exhibitions on campus by Martin Atkins.” “Recent tour card winner Adam Warner is a former Sheffield student with an impressive record in student events too. I’m a big advocate of university being a pathway by which you can pursue darts.” Friday’s event will help to cap off an excellent year of UDUK darts and help to further sow the seeds for future growth. We wish all those competing the very best.&nbsp;

Biggest event since Covid beckons for UDUK

University players head to Rotherham for Summer Showdown