Meet the family of dart throwing champions living in B.C. and Newfoundland working to grow the sport

Bill Hammond Jr. never would have imagined his whole family would end up playing darts competitively — let alone have a teenager win the world cup. 

He started playing in the '90s, when a friend invited him to try it out. 

“I thought it was a joke,” he says with a laugh. 

But as it turned out, he was pretty good. 

Then he met his now-wife, Sandy Hope, and they started playing competitive darts together, getting serious about one another and the sport.

“But there were not the opportunities back then like there are now,” he says.  “The opportunities for dart players nowadays is absolutely amazing. You could make a career out of it now.”

That’s just what his son, 17-year-old Peyton Hammond, is hoping. The young athlete just won the World Darts Federation World Cup Youth Singles 2025 title in Seoul, South Korea, in September, and is hoping to move to England, where darts tournaments are more frequent and more lucrative. 

“In the U.K., they have a tournament almost every single weekend. Here, I'm playing a tournament probably once a month,” he said. 

But before Peyton takes off, he and his family are doing everything they can to try to grow the sport of darts all across Canada. 

While many think of darts as a game to play with friends over a couple of pints, 16-year-old national champion Jayda Hammond says it’s much more than that. 

“It's not just a pub sport like everybody thinks it is,” she says, noting that she wouldn’t be able to play as a minor if that were the case. “It brings families together.”

It certainly does bring the Hammond-Hope family together; the crew spans from coast to coast. Bill and Sandy live in Langford, B.C., with three of their kids, Peyton, Jayda and 23-year-old Trey Hammond, while the other two