Curling Lesson 4 - So Long, Curling!
We hardly knew ye.
Our 4th and final curling lesson wrapped up last night. Here’s the paradox of taking the spring lesson: In a couple of weeks, the PCC will pull the plug on the cooling system and close the doors for the summer. I guess it’s too costly for an independent organization to keep a sheet of ice frozen in the hot summer. So after finally starting to make some headway into the art of good curling, we will now have to quit for 6 months, so that we can pretty much start from scratch in the fall.
Last night’s attendance differentiated the true curlers from the gawkers. 4 weeks ago, there was about 40 people. Last night, there was half that. We noticed that the class size seemed to be dwindling, but last night, it was very clear. We began again with a few minutes of practicing delivery, and then we dove straight into the curling. We opted to sit the first end out and took over the blue stones in the same “winner stays on the ice” format.
Mike returned to the skip role, and I took up the vice skip post. Mary and X switched off so that X was throwing lead, which is far more sensible based on their natural throwing styles. Although in a non-competitive environment, I still think it makes sense to have Mary throwing lead and X throwing second so they can work on their weaknesses.
However, it worked out well, as we proceeded to run the next two ends. We threw some decent granite, with this week’s games actually won by decent throwing and not just whomever was lucky enough to get a stone to stop in the house. I threw a takeout that was dead-on except as the handle left my hand, it did not turn at all. Luckily, it spun in the correct direction on its own. We picked up one point in the first end with the “hammer” (last rock advantage); a tactical loss since one point is not all that significant compared to the advantage having the hammer brings. It’s generally preferable to try to “blank” the end by having no points awarded to either team and keep the hammer in lieu of picking up only one point and losing the hammer.
We made up for it in our second end, “stealing” 2 points. We had some half-decent throws and then clogged the front of the house with guards (some unintentional). We learned some of the intricacies of sweeping, too. Sweeping is an interesting aspect of the game. As discussed in prior curling posts, sweeping reduces curl and increases the distance the stone travels. We had generally been deciding whether or not to sweep based on the weight (speed) of the stone, and not really the line the stone was travelling. During one throw, Mary and I quickly decided the stone was at least heavy enough to carry into the house, so we trotted alongside without sweeping when suddenly Mike and the coach were yelling at us to sweep. Too little too late as the stone plowed into one of the corner guards. The sweepers are responsible for judging the weight of the stone, but the skip is watching the path of the stone to determine whether it will make it to its intended target, or if it is being drawn off course by too little or too much turn, an obstacle close to the intended line, or just a plain poor delivery. In general, the skip’s call takes priority. That is, if the sweepers think the weight is OK, the skip may still call for them to sweep, and for the most part, the sweepers defer to the skip’s judgement.
I also experimented with some sweeping tips that one of the instructors gave us last week regarding timing. One tip involved gauging the weight of the throw based on your pace following it down the sheet. With this thought in mind, I found it easy to tune into my footsteps and realized that if I have to trot alongside the stone it will probably carry the house and won’t need to be swept…at least not for distance. This instructor also has a clever stopwatch mounted to his broom. By timing the delivery up until the rock crosses the hogline, you can get an idea of how heavy the throw is, especially if the players are consistent about not using their arms to adjust the speed of the rock (which is a bad habit to get into). Now of course, I don’t have my own broom, let alone a nifty stopwatch attached to it. Nonetheless, I did find that counting to myself did help me gauge weight surprisingly well even without a watch.
In our third end, things took a turn for the worse. You could tell we were starting to get a little tired, as our accuracy was decreasing. We still had shot rock when the last stone was coming down the ice, but a woman name Diane (we often stayed in the same class with Diane and her husband/companion John) who had sometimes absolutely struggled for the last 3 weeks really hit her stride and threw a rock pretty much dead onto where the skip had called it, which was right next to our shot rock. While it was unfortunate to finally be unsaddled, it was nice that it was Diane’s great throw, and to be honest, we needed a rest 
Thus concludes posts related to curling for awhile. There is an invitation-only open house for “graduates” of the curling class in April, but if we don’t make it to that, curling posts will be scant for the next 6 months. Hopefully I can get in with the UM Rowing Club in the meantime!