Luke Littler has taken the darts world by storm over the last six months. The 17-year-old Englishman is therefore an example for many children who also aspire to having a professional darts career.
Littler made his big breakthrough at the most recent World Darts Championship. But just a month before his now legendary World Championship final with Like Humphries, Littler was still dominating the Junior Darts Corporation (JDC) events. The JDC is the junior level of darts, specifically for 16-year-olds and under, and is the main circuit for promising, young talent to advance to the pros. There are now more than 50 JDC academies in Britain and the Littler effect means business is booming. Craig Neale founded one of these academies, MK Sharks Darts, in 2016 and reopened it after Covid in Bletchley. He employs nine coaches, two of whom are former academy product - known as "Sharks" - themselves.
“Before Luke Littler, we had 30 Sharks. But the Luke thing was crazy, we got 20 new ones joined from that. We now have 50 and a waiting list of 13 children," Neale explains of the Littler effect on the next generation of darting stars, in quotes collected by The Sun. “It was crazy. My phone was ringing to the point where I ended up getting a second SIM card to put into my phone. All just so I could turn it off as people were phoning that number up so much just after work.”
"What Luke has done for the game is amazing," Neale continues, full of praise for Littler. "And he came through the same JDC system that the kids at the academy are now a part of.”
Neale's academy is run by trained volunteer coaches and offers children a safe environment to learn to play darts - while also giving them the opportunity to compete in JDC tournaments through a handicap system. “It gives that younger person the chance to be able to win. It's very heavily against the better players, the handicapped system. It's just the way the system is," he explains. "But it does work. It gives everyone a fair crack at the whip."
“We’ve got 14-year-old Jack Marshall, he's just won two JDC advanced tours a couple of weekends ago, which is what Luke was doing," he concludes. “He's essentially semi-pro, I guess you could say. He doesn't get paid for it. He gets equipment and everything, but you could call it. He's on that (professional) path.”
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