DARTS: Tawa falls just short of bull's eye

ANENDRA SINGH Just before Tawa Paikea's Dad made a beeline for work early yesterday morning he poked his head into the darts player's room to wish him all the best.
"Go up, go out there and do your best, son. Go get gold," Cedric Paikea, the packhouse forklift driver from Camberley, yelled out before darting off.
Little did the Hastings Boys' High School Year 12 pupil know the day would come down to one dart, which left him agonisingly short of fulfilling his Dad's wish during the final day of the three-day New Zealand Youth and Junior Darts Championships in Hastings.
To the mathematically challenged, the 17-year-old Hastings Darts Association member simply lost 3-1 to Taranaki's Tyson Tukina in the boys' youth singles final - chapter closed.
Not that the earring-wearing Tawa cares about statistics or would ever use that as an excuse to disguise his lapses of concentration in the best of five legs and first to 501 finish.
"Dad's going to be really happy when he finds out I've won silver," he said, resigned to not capturing a national age-group singles title in his final year in the under-17 championships but comfortable in the knowledge that it wouldn't rob him of seeing a smile on his father's face.
While Tawa went off to collect his medal in front of a field of 152, the host club's number crunchers revealed that Tawa averaged 18.02 points per dart compared with the winner, Tyson, who got home on a shaky flight of 8.3. In layman's terms, the difference was Tawa did it in 106 throws of the dart while Tyson had 107.
So why the 3-1 leg gulf then?
After shuffling a sheaf of A4 papers and mumbling over the computer keyboard, Association secretary Andrew Pattison explained that Tawa raced gallantly toward his 501s but when it came to nailing his doubles his radar wasn't honed in.
"A classic example was the fourth leg where he raced to the finish but lost by two points," Pattison said.
Earlier, sitting across the table, Tawa, a boy of few words, attests: "I was a bit overwhelmed. I couldn't hit my doubles, especially in the first and third (legs)."
Tyson left Tawa high and dry with 40 to make in the first leg before Tawa hit back in the second, leaving Tyson with 37 in arrears. A stung Tyson quickly found a rapport with the corkboard on the wall in the third, leaving Tawa with a don't-argue 52.
Tawa defeated Auckland's Teriko Aranga 2-0 in the semifinal and took Palmerston North's Amaro Uri (2-0) to the cleaners, defeated clubmate and Monday's gold-medal-winning pairs partner, Henry Heather, by the same score before Nelson's Sean Dawson offered some resistance, 2-1.
He also scored 180s against Amaro and Henry, who got the highest finish of 155 in the three-day tourney.
In the youth girls' final, Wellington's Dawn Unuka crushed neighbouring Hutt Valley's Sherzana Witehira, 3-0. The province's juniors didn't feature in the pairs section.