AX THROWING COMES TO HOUSTON
Iwrap my left hand around the handle of an ax. Then I fold my right hand over top of the left. This isn’t quite what I was expecting, I think to myself. But I look over my left shoulder at Sarah Sed, the owner of the brand new Houston Axe Throwing, and decide she looks like she’s done this about a billion times. So I listen intently to her directions.
“You want to hold it tight enough that it doesn’t feel like it’s going to slip out. But not so tight that you’re holding onto it for dear life,” she says.
I realize I’m doing a little more of the latter and relax my hands a bit.
Sed smiles. “Nice and loose,” she says.
For Sed, this is just another day at the office, after she and her boyfriend opened up the shop last month. For me? Well, I live in the Loop, so I don’t really see axes all that often. And I certainly don’t chuck them endover-end at a target on a daily basis. So, yeah, I’m a little nervous.
Be the target Sed tells me to lift the ax over my head, swinging forward. When it’s at about the height of my forehead, that’s when I’m supposed to let it go.
“Pull your arms through and kind of use the momentum to help push it forward. You don’t need to hurl it with all your might, and you don’t want to throw it super light either,” she says. “When you let it go, it will turn over once, and it should hit the target at about a 90-degree angle.”
She has plenty more instructions too: Follow through. Put all my weight on my left foot. Don’t flick my wrists.
“Should I be, like, closing one eye to line it up or anything?” I ask, closing my left eye, the way I see people aiming darts and guns in the movies.
“No, no. You’re going to stare down the bullseye,” she says. “You want
to look at the target the entire time. Because when you let go, if you’re looking at the ground, it’s going to go wherever you’re looking.”
I peek down at the tips of my cowboy boots, carefully planted on the throwing line marked with blue tape, and hope to high heaven I won’t be saying goodbye to a toe this morning. “Be the target,” she tells me. I look back up at the target: An upright pine slab 14 feet in front of me.
“Be the target,” I whisper to myself as I bring my hands up over my head.
I take a deep breath, and begin whipping my arms forward.
The ax releases.
National trend
While it’s new to Houston, ax throwing isn’t exactly a novelty. It’s a trend that has been creeping across the country as of late.
The sport really began about a decade ago in Canada, when a group of friends had a lightbulb moment after tossing hatchets at a tree. Soon, they started an ax-throwing venue, and a league was born.
The sport’s popularity grew quickly, and it seems to be hitting a fever pitch in the U.S. now, with new outfits popping up in Cincinnati, Philadelphia and Denver this summer.
Houston Axe is claiming its right as “the very first indoor urban ax-throwing range and ax-throwing club in Texas,” after opening on June 13 (the sacred International Axe Throwing Day). But it wasn’t the only game in Texas for long. A spot opened in Dallas about a week later, and another venue announced it will be popping up in Austin later this summer.
“It’s still relatively new — even in Canada,” Sed says. “They’re all over now, but 10 years ago, there were only a few.”
Sed thinks the swashbuckling factor has contributed to its rapid growth as of late.
“We see a mix of everything. You’ve got your people who are just looking to come in and see what it’s about. We also get a lot of date nights: Couples coming through with their friends for double- and triple dates,” she says. “I’ve had birthday parties, and bachelor and bachelorette parties are super popular as well.”
The rush
As my ax slices through the air in front of me, I can see the appeal. And during its splitsecond journey toward the target, I feel euphoric. Until I watch it slam against the wall and drop down onto the floor with a thunk.
Sed’s practice shots had all hacked into the wood, and rested there, on target. Mine? I hit the target with the handle.
“All right, not bad,” Sed says, encouragingly.
I laugh awkwardly. “Isn’t the blade part supposed to hit the board, though?”
“That’s not bad for a first throw. Trust me,” she says.
“Not bad” is seldom good enough for me, and I take this as a challenge. I need diagnostics. “Did it rotate more than once? What did I do?”
“You just let go a little too early,” she tells me. “Like, when you let go, you’re a little afraid to throw it.”
I tense up at this suggestion. Is she calling me a scaredy-cat? I’ll show her.
“Don’t’ be afraid to let it go down before you release it. And don’t be afraid to mess up either,” Sed says, as though she’s reading my mind. “So same stance. And bend your knees.”
I bend my knees — deeper this time. “Be the target,” I whisper again.
I pull my arms back, behind my head, and swing them forward, releasing the ax at eyelevel. It whirls blade-over-handle through the air, into the pine target at the other end of the pen.
The loud snap of cracking wood rings out through the air, and I let out a whoop. Sure, the ax is hanging in the target’s outer circle — far from the big red bull’s-eye — but I’ll take it.
I retrieve the ax, and walk back to the line of blue tape with all the swagger of a lumberjack.
I want to try again. And this time, I’m taking down the bull’s-eye.