Hello. My name is Badger, and I've got an Axescores addiction. And I think you might, too.
Axescores, that delightful website/app that is equal parts in-depth and wondrously confusing, is a HUGE part of throwing in the IATF. Nowhere else in my weird-sport history was there a way to categorically determine how I was competing against other throwers, myself, and what a person named Collin thought of the whole mess.
But as my throwing career advanced over the years, I came to realize I was checking Axescores more and more. Before a league night, after a match. Hell, sometimes while I'm at a farmer's market and I hear something that sounds like purple league (it was a purple leek).
AT SOME POINT, I STOPPED THROWING AXES, AND STARTED THROWING DATA.
Here's what I'm realizing about myself: I love quantification when it comes to shit I do. I think it taps into that same dopamine receptor that goes nuts over ancestry and personality quizzes.
And that's fine. Being entertained by dumb stuff is fine. BUT as I got a little bit better at this sport, I got hyper focused on my results rather than the actual...you know...performance of the ding dang thing. I'm being a little hyperbolic about it, but not by a lot: checking my Collins ranking, my averages, how many 81s I had: it started being the way I measured whether I was enjoying myself or not. Which is, dear reader, effing wild.
THE REASON i'M BRINGING UP AXESCORES AT ALL:
I reckon I'm not the only person who gets hyper focused on Axescores and on their own measurements (easy, now), and want to put out a little, gentle reminder that none of that stuff, really, has any impact on whether you're enjoying yourself while hucking axes - except for when you feel like your performance, now quantified and recorded, isn't what you want it to be.
Listen, Axescores is great, and even with its quirks and nonsense, I'm thankful it exists. It gamifies the sport, and as an aged Millennial, that satisfies me in a deep way. But I now make it a point to remind myself that I'm not paying money to change some numbers in an app, nor am I practicing/over purchasing axes/running a blog for the sake of making Collin, that little minx, give me a lower number in his creepy list. I'm doing all of this because I like throwing axes into targets.
And it might sound so dumb to read this, and I get that, but I think it's important enough to write about: don't forget why you're doing what you're doing. I doubt really high performing throwers worry about this so much, and chances are that new throwers don't either.
But for those of us in the middle (the lower-middle, in my case) who are in a position where they can constantly check on the changes in performance between leagues/weeks, It's easy to get lost in the data. And that's no good, friend. It's not good.
So, maybe this is more of a cautionary tale: Look at Axescores, get that dopamine, but remember that much like most things you see on the internet, it's not that important.
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