Steve Brown founded the Junior Darts Corporation in 2010, a youth tour for players under the age of 18.
Brown himself was still a Tour Card holder with the PDC at the time. "When I started the
JDC, I was still playing in the PDC and my son wanted to get into the sport," he told the
Daily Star. "I grew up with the traditional method of playing darts in the pub, but I wasn’t so keen on that journey for him. So, I converted my dad’s function room above his bar into a safe place for kids to play."
“I knew he had a few friends who played darts, but they didn’t play in a pub either, they played in each other’s houses. I told the local newspaper what I was doing, and they mentioned it in the local press," Brown recalls. "In the first week 30 kids turned up and they had their own shirts, their own darts, and their own nicknames! Likeminded parents didn’t want to take their kids to the pub, so it was a bit of a eureka moment that this must be going on everywhere.”
Over the years, more and more academies were established. "What I noticed when I first started is that the academies were all playing tournament formats," Brown, who uses a coloured shirt system, similar to karate belts, explains. "Kids were playing in them, losing in the first round, and then sitting out the rest of the session, which was no good to anybody. So, I had to come up with a way of everyone who pays their fees for the week playing the same amount of darts or leaving with something."
The JDC recently gained even more attention thanks to
Luke Littler's strong performance. "In my own social circle there are people who you’d never previously have associated with darts who are now fans,” Brown says. "They’re all Luke Littler fans. He’s captured the imagination of not just the country but the world as well. He’s introduced new eyeballs to the sport.”
Brown first met Littler when the prodigy was only 12. It was an experience he didn't soon forget. "During lockdown I was still on the ProTour and playing online tournaments to keep my arm in and remain competitive,” he begins his anecdote. "I played Luke in an online competition – he must have been 12 at the time. I was speaking to his dad as he was there to make sure that he was fine. I spoke to him and he said: ‘he’s playing really well at the moment.’ I thought ‘well, he’s 12 years old, how good can he be?’ He absolutely smashed me!”
“If you’d have asked me a year ago whether Luke would’ve made the final of the worlds I’d have said no," Brown concluded. “But over the last 12 months he’s played on the MODUS and in WDF events and dominated everyone.”
