Every sport has a particular sound that hits just the right note in a fanâs brain. The crack of a wooden bat against a well-hit baseball. The siren going off after the puck slips past a goaltender. The swish of a basketball hitting nothing but net.
In axe-throwing, itâs somewhere between a âthwack!â and a âthud.â
When you get it, thoughâespecially after throwing a few that clatter off the softwood pine targets onto the floorâit is deeply satisfying.
Not that axe-throwing is a full-fledged sport just yet, at least not here. (It is in Canada.) But Corey Deasy thinks itâs ready to take off in America very soon. His throwing club, LumberjAxes, opens officially in Millvale on August 18.
Deasy sees parallels with the âEscape Roomâ phenomenon, where he also got in on the ground floor.
âWhen I opened it [The Escape Room in Greenfield] in 2014, there were fewer than 10 in the whole country,â says Deasy. âNow there are a few thousand. There are fewer than 10 axe-throwing places in the country right now.â
One has already opened in Western Pennsylvania: Valhalla Indoor Axe Throwing, in Jeannette, Westmoreland County. Theyâve taken the Viking theme.
Though LumberjAxes obviously touts a lumberjack motif, this isnât just a game for barrel-chested beard-growers. In fact, the most surprising thing is how easy it is. Itâs like throwing darts. Very big, dangerous-looking darts that donât fly straight.
âMy wife was eight-and-a-half-months pregnant and almost won the tournament,â says Deasy, of their first attempt in Philadelphia.
The 6,000-square-foot building is well off the main drag in Millvale, though the giant steelworker muralâformerly home to Red Star Ironworksâis easy to spot. Itâs also not far from Grist House Craft Brewery.
It can host 120-150 people, so team building events and large parties can be accommodated. If you have a big group, LumberjAxes will set up a single-elimination tournament.
The axes are even manageable in a smaller personâs handsâthey could also be described as hatchets. Thereâs a very specific, two-handed throwing motion, that takes advantage of the throwerâs momentum instead of sheer arm strength.
All participants must be 18. Oh, and donât wear open-toe shoes.
Group sessions are $35 per person for a 2.5-hour block. Walk-ins will be able to try it out during certain hours, too.
LumberjAxes is shooting for a late-August opening. The biggest challenge is training axe-throwing staff, because there arenât a lot of people with experience doing that, Deasy says.
Eventually, the plan is to add more sharp things to throw to see what sticks: knives, throwing stars, Batman âBatarangsâ and even razor-edged playing cards.
LumberjAxes plan to join the National Axe Throwing Federation, and one day send players to tournaments to represent Pittsburgh.