Every few months I come across a fellow thrower or a post on faceflop about how axe throwing is taking its last, desperate puffs of a vape pen. And surely, on the surface, it makes sense to believe so; axe houses are shutting down, the sport isn't exactly growing in a way that would make a 1980's stockbroker lose their mind whilst huffing some pixie dust and scream "radical, bayyybeee!" or whatever they did - I wouldn't know, I never watched Glengarry Glen Ross.
But in a world (in a worrllllddd) where hyperbole has become the norm, it's perhaps easy to stop oneself from actually considering what growth and sustainability looks like, and if those things are even, you know, uh, important.
Hop in, kids, we're going to storyland.
We're in the early 2000's, and I'm just getting into a different tiny, weird, community-based sport.
I've mentioned it before, but I used to play bike polo. This sport had a lot of similarities between my experience in IATF and the NAH (North American Hardcourt Bike Polo Association, the bike polo clone of our dear International Axe Throwing Federation):
They both sprung up early in the sport's growth
They were both run by people who, you know, did other stuff, too
They were both critically understaffed for the amount of players of said sport
They were both trying to put some guiderails up around an organic, community-based activity
They both had regions, and had representatives from those regions to help create communication between players and the governing body
The NAH still exists, btw, and that makes me happy. But, speaking from my tenure as a bike polo player, they were a very weak sort of governance when it came to how the sport was played. Players would often badmouth the NAH, rules changes, requirements, where tourneys were held (and how, and when), while NAH officials were attempting to "legitimize" the sport and find sponsors, get a cash flow going, and grow.
One of the many issues with bike polo at the time, at least when it came to organized play, was around the mechanics of the NAH vs. the actual growth of the sport.
The britches, they were just too big at the start.
Here's the rub: the NAH really wanted to build the shell of an organization that bike polo could grow into. They were creating the framework that, eventually bike polo would need - or that they expected it to need in the future. That meant a fat rulebook, trained officials, standardized courts to play on (and equipment to use), all that jazz.
But bike polo players, more often than not, just wanted to play the sport and be left alone to do it. They LOVED the way the game felt like it belonged to them, and loved that any doofus with a bike could join in the fun (so long as they could steal gas pipe and a ski pole to make a mallet) (that's a whole other story) (I'm probably wanted in a few counties).
So we, the players, saw this: an organization that was so focused on the future that they seemed to ignore what players right now wanted.
And they, the organizational body, saw this: a player base that wasn't growing "fast enough," and didn't spend enough money to justify the cost of setting up a legit sporting association.
I'm hoping this seems familiar to you, dear reader.
When I left bike polo, it was during a time that the sport felt "dead"
When I started, bike polo was growing. It was thriving, I dare say. New people were joining our little club in a big way, there were tournaments everywhere, and new companies were popping up all over the place to sell new, improved (and legal) equipment.
When I left, sometime just before the COVID-19 lockdowns hit, the sport felt very different. Over that...shit...decade(?), clubs disappeared. Our own player base shrunk. It felt like the NAH had red-penned the sport into a position where it was too expensive and too rules-focused to bring in interest. And despite this beautiful framework they'd created, everything was for nothing.
But friend-o, looking back at it now, that feeling was wrong. Kinda like that overpowering urge one gets to eat just one more piece of cake. That feeling? It's wrong. You're never gonna feel better after it. Never.
Axe throwing, as a sport, is basically brand new. And the needs/wants/possibility measurements are yet to be balanced.
As near as I can tell, organizational bodies in any non-traditional, yet-to-be-established sport are always gonna make it feel like there are gaps. They can't help it. Most of the folks who are dedicated to, you know, building a sports league are very focused on sustaining that sports league, and that focus often comes off as a money grab, or a self-aggrandizing powerplay.
At the same time, players in any non-traditional, yet-to-be-established sport will, inevitably, reach a point where the explosive growth of said sport stops, and a bunch of the things they saw as permanent disappear. Yes, I'm talking about axe houses and specific tourneys, now. Add to that the seemingly sudden disappearance of league/new thrower growth, and it all seems fairly bleak.
But, and this is kinda the point - a plateau isn't always the end of something. Hell, even a valley doesn't mean there isn't another mountain to climb somewhere head. Geography!
Axe throwing grew a lot during the lockdowns, and that made for some really sudden, non-typical expansion.
Between quarantined humans who were desperate to do something new, to amazing deals on spaces (for a period of time), axe throwing had a boom - there's no denying. And that boom certainly felt like an opportunity to create spaces/events which were big enough to allow for continued growth. So people made deals with landlords who were looking for new business. They expanded with the expectation of even more people getting involved.
But there's a horse, and there's a cart. And sometimes, dear reader, we get the order of those two mixed up. Explosive growth in - hell, anything - during a time of social upheaval is a tricky thing to depend on. We, humans I mean, are weird little things, and our passions can come and go like the tide.
I don't think it's realistic to be surprised by axe houses shutting down. I also don't think it's unrealistic that the growth in "official" throwers couldn't maintain such a level of expansion. But I also believe those measurements aren't as important as we're making them out to be.
Growth for growth's sake isn't great - sometimes shrinking is, you know, okay.
[[SELF-DEPRECATING WEIGHT JOKE GOES HERE. EVERYONE GIGGLES BUT FEELS SAD FOR A LITTLE, ROUND MAN. MOVING ON]]
I guess I just don't get the panic about axe throwing, as an organized sport, shrinking down to a size that better reflects the level of interest by the general public. Or, maybe to put it in a way which reflects how I see it: I don't see a problem with the high-tide of axe throwing enthusiasm during/shortly after COVID quarantine receding.
I think it effing blows for axe throwing houses that can't stay open, and sucks equally for throwers who, you know, 100% relied on those axe houses for community and leagues. But I don't think those folks are forever going to be without an axe house - I think, maybe, it'll just take a minute for the slow, steady growth of the sport to more organically reach the levels that it maintained when there were leasing deals and people were stir-crazy.
I'm really not putting this in a way that expresses my thoughts very well. Let me try one last time with a story that relates to the beginning of this post:
The little club that could, did, and then didn't.
At one point in 2014, our little bike polo club (Lancaster United, for those curious folks) was chosen to host a regional qualifying tourney. We spun up quick, securing sponsorships, becoming a non-profit, building 3 (or maybe four?) bike polo courts atop tennis courts at a local park.
And we did it, we hosted nearly everyone from our region (and some from outside our region). We felt real big time. We had shirts and hotel deals and everything.
So after that weekend - and after weeks of madly rushing around to make sure we actually managed the thing - we were left with a huge apparatus of an organization, and absolutely no need to have it. Somewhere out there is a bank account with my name on it, and maybe a few bucks in it, for a bike polo club nonprofit. We built ourselves a track that didn't have a train on it anymore. But that didn't mean our club (nor bike polo) was dying.
It just meant we were overprepared for the potential growth of it, and that growth was going to take its time getting to us. Regardless, our little club still met up and played. We still sent players to tourneys at other clubs (who likewise grew big quick, then found they had too much for what they needed).
So when I see the axe throwing community stating with their full throats that axe throwing, as an organized sport, is dying or dead - or when I see the frustration with axe houses closing all over the damn place, or even feel my own frustration with some of the decisions an overworked, understaffed, probably-guessing-at-lots-of-stuff organizational body makes, I reassure myself with the idea that we haven't really figured out how this all works, yet, and we (hopefully, maybe, if the evil eye doesn't read this post) have time to sort it all out.
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