Axe Thrower Interview: Stormy Stormerson

I think the first time I watched Stormy throw was at IATC 2024. She had something like six matches back-to-back, and she was so focused in, it was like watching a highlight reel in real time. I've wanted to sit down with Stormy forever, but working up the courage to talk to someone who's name(s) is/are synonymous with the very best in the sport required a lot of courage-building.

Fortunately, I managed to catch up with her at the U.S. Championship at ChillAxe, and our sprawling conversation became the axe thrower interview you're reading right here, right now.

Where do you throw out of, and how long have you been throwing?

Detroit Axe, and I think about 4 years, now.

You are, in my opinion, one of the best throwers in the world, and I think you are one of the most impactful people in the sport. People inherently get excited to watch you throw, which I think is a rare thing.

You think about people who are the top, I don't know, three, they're really boring to watch, but people are excited to watch you throw. I think you grow the sport in a very important way. In your own head, do you view yourself as a unique thrower?

I think I've always viewed myself as an underdog. It's weird to hear that I am a top player because I know I've gotten there and I've changed my view of myself significantly over the last year.

But I know that I have a lot more that I can grow, especially in terms of consistency. I think with the level I'm capable of playing at, I am one of the most inconsistent throwers at that level. It's a mental thing, and that's the last boundary to overcome. I think the mental game, regardless of how good you are, is the hardest thing for most people to overcome.

I would agree. And I think a lot of folks I interview say the technical ability of act throwing isn't hard to get. You can become technically very proficient, but then there's the second stage of becoming very good at axe throwing in regard to the mind game.

And anything can affect your mental game. It can be anything holding you back.

I did watch you at A ITC last year. You threw six matches in a row just because of where you placed and you looked-

Pissed?

You looked angry, but you were incredibly consistent.

So for me, anger is something that snaps me into focus.

At IATC last year, a thing that I tend to do is overthink, and I knew I had Adeline coming up. I know that Adeline and me, our games are always really close, and that game was just too early in the bracket for me. It was my third game or something.

So I overthought it and I played horribly. I didn't hit any clutches. I didn't toe in for my big axe and it was just, I didn't give her [Adeline] a game.

I played against Austin this weekend. I knew that was also going to be a good game. And he threw a perfect match against me. And I knew coming in that he probably would and that I would need to be perfect back, and I was almost, but when I fall apart, it's upsetting. So the thing I do the best, what I've learned, is how to channel that anger into something useful.

There are other players like Showtime for example, he is one of my mentors, and I think technically his skill level is unmatched, but I think he doesn't win as much as he should or when he played, he didn't win as much as he should because when he would make a mistake, he would get angry and he didn't recover from it.

That anger didn't serve him. So I've learned how to make it serve me. And when I figured that out, I just kind of went on a tear. I put my head down and it was just focused. When I zone in like that through several 81s, I don't even remember doing it. People tell me about it now.

You're touching on something about using your emotion, potentially a negative emotion, that could pull you out of the game, and reformulating into something positive to put you back in the game intelligently. Is it possible for you to talk about what that looks like? What are you thinking when it happens?

Or is that process more ephemeral?

It's a feeling for me. It's all energy. So you're just, I channel that energy forward, I channel it into the turning everything else off except for the one throw I'm doing in that moment, which is incredibly difficult if you're just angry. And tournaments are fun, right?

You're surrounded by a lot of really cool people and you want to talk to them. So it's hard to stay in the moment. There's a lot of things people do to snap their brain into what it has to do.

One person who's really good at that is Rander. If you watch him before he goes into big matches, he'll stretch every time and do the same routine every time because it's triggering his brain to get into focus.

The focus for me comes when I get pissed off. My brain just focuses automatically. But that's not the case for everything, or for everyone. So if it doesn't serve you, you need to get rid of it. I've seen several people who get pissed off and they just fall apart because they don't realize that that anger doesn't serve them. Or whatever that they're feeling doesn't serve them.

That's another reason why you'll see someone like Big Time walking around in serious matches or before serious matches with headphones in, because he knows the danger of axe throwing's social aspect. It's an impediment to his game. So he tries to focus himself in that way, to just be within himself to draw his focus. Does that make sense?

A hundred percent. Yeah, I a hundred percent get what you're saying.

He's basically concentrating himself, not letting outside things come in so that he is, when he's throwing, absolutely the one that is affecting him. But it's hard to go in and out of that state.

In my case, I do visualizations and then I'll do breathing exercises and I'll just practice my throw without actually throwing or I'll go someplace quiet.

[[The interview paused, here, because Stormy had a match]]

We were talking about learning to channel emotions that aren't serving you, modifying them into actions or emotions that do serve you in the sport. It made me start thinking, when I was watching your match, you've reached a skill level where I feel like you can see what people are doing in their own throws, especially newer throwers and be like, "oh, this something they could work on. This person needs to learn or experiment," or whatever the change is.

What is a general piece of advice you could give to a newer thrower that would accelerate them, or be helpful? Something you wish somebody would've told you when you were first starting out?

The best thing you can do is find a mentor, someone who is way better than you are, and just fucking hound them. For the last three years, whenever I drove to Toronto, I would go straight to Vaughan and I would sit at the bar and wait for Kimmy to have a break. She was always working and I would play her as much as she would let me, and she'd just kick my ass over and over again. I'd play her as long as she tolerated it. It was good because she'd get practice, but I'd learn the entire time and I'd watch her throw - I'd watch everyone's throw.

Originally, I wasn't throwing so much because I thought I'd win. I threw so much because I was studying people. Eventually that led to a list, a hit list of people that I wanted to beat. I was just so excited to be somewhere new and see other axe throwers' styles. There are so many different styles of throwing.

So if you've never left your city, I highly recommend it. In Detroit, because they're so old, they have a bunch of different throw styles. I throw very vastly differently than Fancy, who is one of my mentors, but also Jemmi, who's coming out of Detroit, who's also very good and Fancy's mentee. And then Poptart and Cooper, both excellent, two-handed throwers with a vastly different throw.

It was, I think, because they weren't originally teaching and sharing information, everyone was just kind of inventing the throw way back before I even started throwing.

And then you have cities like Pittsburgh and you see Adeline and Daddy and Showtime doing the exact same throw and the same thing with Kimmy and Rander. It's identical, but it's different from Pittsburgh and it's different from Detroit. Now I'm rambling.

I like it. I like ramble. So getting a mentor, seeing how other people are doing it and learning from that or figuring out how it affects your own throw, I guess. What keeps you coming back?

Early on, I just kind of had a vendetta.

I had my hit list of people that I wanted to throw, so I was just hunting them down and crossing off names and over the course, without meaning to, I just started becoming friends with Kimmy and her crew in Toronto, Patricia and Jed, they just kind of adopted me despite my lack of desire to be adopted back then.

I was very anxious. I wasn't used to being around people because I had been sick for so long and I was doing my own thing. I was in it for the competitiveness. I was in it to challenge myself, to be in that environment and to perform in that environment. Tournaments, especially back then, were the most horrifying position i could imagine myself being in. Being on a stage, essentially having to compete in front of a bunch of people. It was terrifying. It was thrilling,

Right? Sure. Thrilling but exhausting, I imagine.

So yeah, the list was a big thing and just having to step up to beat those people - being good enough to challenge those people - meant I had to get better.

For instance, Daddy's on my list, and one of my first tournaments was the Urban Open, and I was in a bracket with him and I was like, I need to get to Daddy. In order to do that, I had to go through some big names, and I'm less than a year old in the sport at this point, but just because I had that drive and also because people didn't see me coming, which is a huge advantage, I was able to get to him and almost got him too. I caught him off guard. But yeah, it took me probably another year to get him.

I often think of how this sport will be talked about when it has existed for 50, 60 years. I think about how people are going to piece together how axe throwing grew and how it failed and how it succeeded, and how it was so different when it started compared to where it goes. And I think you are one of the people, whenever those conversations are happening, that is going to come up - your impact on the sport, and your journey.

Why do you think that?

Because you are a fiercely strong competitor who went from being relatively new in this sport, at least in IATF, in the tournament circuit, and got to a point of challenging anybody that you throw against. And you do it with a real lack of, in my mind, a real lack of ego.

I think that's a really rare thing. A lot of people who are very, very up in the sport, whether it is a positive ego or a negative ego, have a very... well... they have a big presence around them, and you are very insular with that, spreading out that "big ego" energy.

It kind of points to what you were talking about before, about how you would get really angry and now you've learned to turn that into something else. I think you are very insular with the way you throw, but you throw so goddamned well that people are unassuming of you until now, until the past year.

There's a reason that all of the people at the top of this sport have egos - that confidence serves you. If your belief is powerful, and if you just know that you can, and know that you will, and you truly believe it, you're probably fucking right.

There's a reason that, especially at the top, there was a personality type - a strong male personality type - one that refused to believe they weren't the very best. My confidence didn't come from that same place of "I'm just great."

My confidence came from my anger, the vendetta I was on, that thinking of "I'm going to win because this is true and this is right." And because I felt like I had been wronged, especially early on, and I felt also there wasn't a space for me, so I had to make a space for myself. And I was unapologetic about pushing out room for me and pulling up the people around me that I wanted to pull up, particularly women.

Because one of the things that I noticed when I was new is that there's a club at the top of the sport. And at my experience, I think because I won so much so early on, and then I befriended certain people, I was pulled in and I got to see how they teach each other and how they talk about axes with each other and having them mentor - having the teacher is the most valuable resource you can have.

I noticed at some tournament Fancy was just missing clutch after clutch after clutch, and he was pissed. I was talking to Showtime and he was like, "just give me a second." He went over, had five words with Fancy, and then Fancy did whatever he said, and he was just hitting clutch after clutch after clutch.

I thought "what is this club and how do I get into it?"

I noticed, at least among the women in the sport, that when I traveled around and then when we'd be at IATC, there'd be a woman that's pretty well known in her area. And another woman pretty well known in her area, but they had never talked. So I figured out how to get women talking to each other through me, through my women's league.

Women's league?

So what I did was I started a secret women's league.

We've been running for almost three years now. We play remotely. And it started as this community, and whenever I saw someone coming up, I was like, just play with us, play with us virtually. And it started this camaraderie and the same kind of networking circles that the guys have.

What started happening is that the women in the original group all started doing really well, started winning their home leagues or winning tournaments, and they probably were already on their way up.

But before I got my coin March madness or whatever, a woman had never won a co-ed 64 person or more tournament. But I was able to do it because of the support I had in this group, then women winning just started happening more and more. Now it's unthinkable that you wouldn't consider women as competitive as men. But back when I first started, they were even considering splitting the sport between genders.

I think the women's league is incredibly valuable, but I think even with that support, women are criminally underrepresented in the sport as far as club recruitment, at least I'm from a venue that has a fair number of strong female throwers, but I do worry about other female throwers plugging into the larger community, and the experiences they might have.

Well, good point. How can, for instance, female throwers from my home club in Lancaster, plug in to that larger group?

They have to come play. It can be hard for women to compete because of that ego thing that we were talking about earlier. And this is something that we're all doing for fun. It's an expensive hobby and it's an emotionally challenging hobby.

If you're a woman, you can add getting put down, looked down on or spoken down to as well, and then women aren't necessarily taught to take up the same space as men, so it doesn't come naturally to advocate for yourself in the arena and outside of it.

For example: one thing I do really well, and that I hear other people sometimes being disappointed in themselves around is calling for a second opinion on the score of an axe.

I'll call for my axe measured. I'll call for a second. And I've had lots of opponents be like, oh, well that's clearly bad.

And I'm like, well, clearly fuck you.

And even as I am standing there calling for the person, the person's walking up to judging. They're trying to convince me to just call my own axe bad. And I'm like, why? And some people shrivel under that, and I think particularly women find it challenging. Then they'll come back later and they'll be like, oh, I should have called that, or I should have listened to my inner voice. And they get themselves shut down, and then they get discouraged. If they're not being taught, which I think is happening more, but is not at the same level, or at least it wasn't, then it can be really discouraging.

Another thing women can do to get themselves involved with the women's league is joining in tournaments. They have to go to tournaments. I pick up people all the time that I just see out and I see them improving. So I'll talk to them and I'll ask them what they need help with.

For instance, yesterday after the tournament, there was a woman from Baltimore, and I've seen her at a bunch of tournaments, and I asked her how she was doing, and she was like, "I've been stagnant in my throw."

So I had her show me her throw. I worked with her for a minute. I called over other people to help, and some other people just walked over to help, too. So we just workshopped her. But you don't get those moments if you're not here.

But that also takes a lot of time. And if you can't travel outside your community, I think it becomes harder. You need, if you don't have it yourself, I guess you have to create it yourself.

I mean, that's what I did. That's what I did with my women's league, and that's what they would have to do, I guess among themselves, become competitive among themselves and push each other. But to do that, you have to care enough to give the effort.

This has been a really informative interview! Is there anybody you want to shout out or anything? Any last parting words or anything like that?

Shout outs to my women's league, their support and camaraderie has made a major difference, not just in my throwing, but in my life. I think people tease me a lot more that I'm a softer person now than I was back then, and that's a hundred percent because of 'em. And Kimmy I for tolerating me when I was just trying to chase her down and Poptart, because she's a really incredible grower and she's been doing it for a really long time. She had to invent her own throw and figure out what worked. Her throw is actually harder than the one-handed throws because she throws from further back. And so she's playing a harder game, but she's playing at the level of very good people, and I find that really fucking impressive. Appreciate it.

Who am I forgetting, Shay? Hi, Shay.

Huge thanks to Stormy for this interview, and for all she's doing in the sport!