ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The best of the best foam dart teams from across the country will be competing in a four-day Dart Zone Pro Competition in Rochester next month. The winning dart blasting team is going to take home $10,000 of the $15,000 in prize money.

This is not your backyard foam dart game. Some of these blaster enthusiasts got started in the Rochester Foam Dart League.

What You Need To Know

  • Players will compete for over $15,000 in prize money in the first-ever Dart Zone Pro Tournament

  • The foam dart pro contest in July 14-17 in Rochester

  • The Rochester Foam Dart League offers foam dart birthday parties, fundraisers, school programs and special events in Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse and Albany

“This is the next level,” said Justin Dangler of the Rochester Foam Dart League. “This is pro foam blaster sports. We always knew at some point we were trying to get to that paintball level of pro play. This has really developed across the country the past few years and we are on the ground floor of the powers that be to make this happen.”

Nerf, step aside. Dart Zone has quite the gear for this fast-growing sport. Darts are flying 250 feet per second.

After four rounds of qualifying, the Rochester Radioactive team is in the Dart Zone pro tournament. It’s ages 14 and up, so you have 14 and 41-year-olds out there blasting away.

Liam Mattingly is an industrial design student at RIT. He’s made a lot of friends through the sport and is even interning at a game developer designing blasters.

“This is a blaster I designed some parts for,” Mattingly said. “It’s a game I’ve played religiously. It’s a moderated game of tag between two teams. This feels like the start of it going more and more mainstream.”

From blaster modifications to new friendships and lots of exercise, this is so much more than the game for Andy Hunsinger. He has stage IV cancer. He was temporarily paralyzed but is now running the foam dart course and playing hard. He is a competitor. He is a survivor.

“It’s pretty much what’s helped keep me alive,” Hunsinger said. “I mean, going to qualifier in New Jersey and getting first place with my team. I mean, it was to the point where I was nearly in tears. It meant the world to me and this whole thing means the world to me. It is my life and there is nothing more in the world that I would rather be doing for fun than this.”

Foam dart fans can see various stages of the competition in person at Foamcon at RIT and the Dart Zone Pro at TSE in East Rochester. The final day of competition will also be live streamed by DartZoneBlasters.com on July 17.