Over 600 people gathered from around Wyoming for the 11th Annual State Darts Tournament this week to win, lose and have fun playing what some participants see as a game but others see as a sport.

Darts is most definitely a sport, according to Jon Boyles of Douglas as he took a break between matches Saturday at the Parkway Plaza Hotel and Convention Center.

"It takes a lot of skill to shoot a dart," Boyles said.

The Douglas man was playing Saturday in the No. 1 bracket of the tournament's team cricket competition, he said.

When a close game of darts nears its finish, the pressure can be very intense on competitors, and things can reach to the levels of seriousness you don't see in mere games, Boyles added.

But Gene Batey of Rock Springs, who also throws darts at a high level, disagrees with Boyles and says darts is a game.

"It's a game," Batey said Saturday as he relaxed outside the competition room. "There's not much athletic about it."

B.J. Jones of Casper agrees.

While it is true that darts is certainly a more physical game than poker, which is now seen on ESPN often, it still cannot be classified as a sport, Jones said.

"I consider it a game," Jones said.

You could, however, certainly debate the sport-versus-game question regarding darts on talk radio, Hones said.

The members of the Casper-based cricket team "We Hate this Game" did not need the airwaves to voice their opinions that they were playing a sport on Saturday.

"It's a sport," said team member Fay Hall.

"It's the only half-athletic game I am good at," she added with a laugh.

Hall's teammates Becky and Chad LeDuke agreed with her and echoed Boyles' sentiments by saying that darts takes a lot of skill and can get pretty serious.

That seriousness was shown Saturday when Steve Postema of We Hate this Game spontaneously erupted into howls and high-fives after hitting two bull's-eyes in a row to claim victory in an extremely close game of cricket.

While not everyone at the tournament Saturday took it tremendously seriously - Casper's Dennis Odom and Kathy Skelton, for example, said they were just there for the fun - there was some fairly serious money on the line.

Total prizes for the five-day tournament totalled $40,000, said tournament coordinator Lee Ann Southards.

And the winning men's team in the most prestigious competition of the tournament, called "Dream Team," split $1,800 among its four members, said fellow coordinator Donna Pagel. The finals of the men's and the women's Dream Team was slated to finish Saturday night, she said.

But every competitor spoken to Saturday afternoon said it was not the prospect of winning money that drove them to compete on the nearly 100 soft-tip boards that were set up for the state's largest darts competition.

Whether darts is a game or a sport, the main reason to play darts is because it is fun, they all said.

And the state tournament is extremely fun as it brings together darters from all over the state to not only compete, but to hang out with each other, Boyles said.

"Oh yeah, state is a blast," said Boyles who was playing in his fifth state tournament. "If you don't win on the board, you win at the bar."

Staff writer Brendan Burke can be reached at (307) 266-0589 or Brendan.Burke@casperstartribune.net.