Maths lesson at the darts club
Dart talent Danny de Graaf gives math lessons at his darts club. Thus his 'lost' year of training to become a teaching assistant is nevertheless a success.
Image: Angeliek de Jonge
Darts is his passion and his life and Danny de Graaf (18) from Bunschoten-Spakenburg is good at it. When he managed to qualify for the World Darts Championship in England in the autumn of 2018, he didn't hesitate for a moment. There was only one problem: the World Cup fell in the middle of the exam week of his training as a teaching assistant. “But of course you don't let a World Cup pass by,” he says. So he went, made it to the semis and is now fifth in the world in the juniors. Once back, the school put a damper on the festivities. Danny: “Because I had missed so much, I couldn't go over. And because I was not yet 18 then, I had to go to school, but then that would be a lost year.”
In consultation with the education officer, he therefore came up with an alternative: giving darts lessons with math assignments for the upper years of primary schools. “As a child I was very bad at math. I averaged 4,3 until I started playing darts,” he explains. “When you play darts, you're just doing math. Not only to add up the points, but also during the throw to determine how many points you still have to put away. Now I can dream the answers. I recently took that math test in high school and I just got an A.”
Fight
His darts club Double Bull and the Dutch Darts Association were immediately enthusiastic about his idea to teach maths. Together they made a lesson book. A company in the village was willing to print it. “Well, everyone knows each other here and if you ask for help, they will,” he says. “Two of all the schools we wrote to responded. I was quite happy with that. But when RTV Utrecht came to film the lesson, the ball really started rolling. There have already been sixteen classes and we have applications for another fifteen, sometimes we even give three classes in a day.”
And there is quite a bit involved. The lessons are given at the darts club and several members help Danny. After the explanation about the sport, the board and the scoring, the class is divided into groups, each with its own supervisor. Three assignments follow. “It's a game show and whoever gets the highest score at the end can win a set of arrows or a bag of candy. Children really like that battle, everyone participates and you really see them getting better at math.”
One of the assignments is to get from 501 to 0 points as quickly as possible. “Children find that calculating backwards very difficult,” Danny notes. “Where experienced darts players manage this in a minute, children take fifteen minutes. But they are enthusiastic about math and in the meantime learn that triple 20 is a total of 60 points or that if you still have 28 points, you can throw a double 19.”
Free dart board
Meanwhile, a secondary school has also registered and Danny is busy adjusting the lessons. “The lessons for group 8 can be a bit more difficult and for secondary schools we will offer two consecutive lessons, so that the arithmetic will stick even better. I never expected it to get this big. A sports shop even wants to offer dartboards that schools can get for free, isn't it great!”
With the free lessons they kill two birds with one stone, says Danny. “Children learn mental arithmetic in a fun way and they are introduced to the sport of darts. After the successes of Barnie and Van Gerwen you can now see the interest in darts decreasing again. With us there are only two youth members
for example. It is often difficult for parents because they have an image of alcohol and pubs. Through the math lessons they discover that we have our own club building, where no alcohol is served. There are really talents among them, so we hope this will lead to more registrations. ”
Every school is still welcome and other darts clubs could also start offering math lessons. Danny has a taste for it and wants to resume training as a teaching assistant. "I really can't think of anything more fun besides darts."
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