St Helens is the one of the world’s darting capitals. The Merseyside city was famous for its glass production in years gone by, but nowadays it’s swapped its glass for gold with some of the world’s best darts players calling the town home.
17 year old Luke Littler; the youngest World Championships finalist ever, Michael Smith the 2023 World Championships winner, Stephen Bunting the BDO 2014 World Champion and current PDC Masters holder and Dave Chisnall; probably the best player to never win a PDC major, all come from St Helen or its surrounding area.
Many of those players such as Luke Littler, can directly attribute their success to one place - the St Helens Darts academy. Started in the early 2000s it’s been dubbed by, well…myself…as the La Masia of darts.
Just like the famous Barcelona academy it’s been a trailblazer in youth development, it’s helped progress the sport (so much so its representatives once went to Parliament to try and make darts an official sport) and as shown above has helped produce tons of darting superstars.
With such a who’s who of players, the pressure to preserve the academy’s decorated reputation is pretty big. To find out just how heavy the weight of expectation is I sat down with recent academy graduate, Ben Patterson, to find out just how big the pressure of representing the world’s best darts academy is now he’s out on the big stage:
“I’ve been coming here (the academy) since I was nine and now I’m too old to play here which is gutting, but now I’m out representing it as a product and I feel I have to give back for everything they’ve done for me.
“I don’t think about the pressure when I’m playing, I always focus on my game when I’m up there but you see all the players that have come from round here have done absolutely amazing and I just want to follow in their footsteps but can I do it? They’ve all been in the same situation as me and I believe in myself and I know I’ve got the ability.
“I look on social media and see Dave Chisnall, Michael Smith and of course Luke Littler, a lad who I’ve known for a while and I want to be like all of them. I want to be on the PDC, I want to travel the world like they are, everywhere they go everyone loves them and I want that.
“If I want that I need to win more, and I haven’t won enough this year. I’ve won a few local competitions but nothing this year so far. But with the way I’m playing at the moment I believe I can start winning things again and hopefully I can turn out to be like all the players from St Helens. They’ve essentially found good form out of nowhere and gone from there so hopefully sooner rather than later that can be me”.
As well as embarking on his debut year in senior competition, Ben has also been pivotal in helping teaching the next generation. Since last year he’s helped coach the academy’s Platinum Group, the best of the best youth talent in the area and is blown away by the quality of the players he works with:
“Now I’m helping out I see all the talent that we’ve got coming through and some of them are very very talented. We’ve got a few on the Junior Darts Corporation tour, and that should get them into the PDC in the next couple of years.
“Obviously we’ve had Luke Littler come through and I needn’t bother listing everything he’s gone on to do since. Eleanor Cairns won the WDF (women’s darts foundation) as well as the Women’s Welsh Open, Harry Gregory played in the UK Open this year.
“We’ve got a lot still coming through too. Harrison Leigh is a good player, Harvey Heathcoat has been great recently, David Burkes too, there’s so many players. There’s loads of people at the academy that will turn out to be good. I really believe they will be.
“Alot of their success is down to the academy. I’ve come here for years and I’ve learned so much and developed so much. Playing at home you won’t learn anything, but playing here teaches you so much and I’m honoured to be helping local players get better.”
So in the next few years be sure to keep an eye out for any more future superstars coming out of St Helens’ La Masia’s revolving door of tungsten talent.
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