Yet Another Curling Post
After a 2-week hiatus, we finally returned to the ice. Sunday’s Beginners League match was very unfortunate. We had a lot of cobwebs from the break and everyone just felt off. The ice was also in bad shape. Very slow…I felt as though I had to throw so hard just to clear the hogline that I was losing my balance. Finally around the 4th end, the ice was speeding up a little and we started to get the hang of it again. We picked up two or three to take the lead after the 6th end. We had only about 15 minutes left but the decision was made to play a 7th end even if we couldn’t get in an 8th While I wanted to keep playing, it seems weird to play an odd number of ends. The other team had the hammer and we would not get a chance to even things up if they took the lead. It sort of felt like not getting the last at bat in baseball when you are the home team.
My fears were justified - the other team tied it up resulting in a draw. In some leagues there is a draw contest or extra end played to break the tie, but not in this one. Of course had we played the 8th end with the hammer, we could very well have won (or lost really). Ah well. One moment of sheer annoyance came when just as I was throwing, an opponent dropped his broom and it fell out onto the ice, right into my field of view. My eye darted right to it, I lost my focal point, and I fell on my trailing knee which always causes me to push rock sending it through the house. I think I was more annoyed that this distracted me than I was that the other guy accidentally dropped the broom. Of course I was frazzled and also had a poor throw the next time although somehow it ended up right on target and probably was my best throw of the night.
My PSA here is to try to be as still as possible while someone is throwing. If you need to put on or remove a slider/gripper, just wait until the stone is released. You’ll have a good 30 seconds after that. After this incident I have started checking myself before messing with my gripper when someone is about to deliver. I just hold my broom steady and wait until they’re done.
Monday was back to Men’s League with my new team. I think we have a lot of potential, although we were severely outmatched last night and got clobbered. The other team had Craig standing in as skip (that is the big Canadian guy who looks a bit like Dick Vermeil) who could very possibly make money shots with his eyes closed, a decent vice, and this amazing second. I swear the guy is 80 years old. He comes hobbling in a bit hunched over looking fairly frail, and then he gives the stone a shove with barely any slide, and the stone magically arrives where its supposed to go! Then Craig calls down “Great Shot!” and he turns to us and makes some modest comment like “I can’t even see the broom, so I don’t know how they go where they should.” or “Oh no, I was way off. That was just good sweeping.” Yeah right. Maybe he uses his sense of smell to aim, but he is still amazing. And they had a noob lead who is comparable to me.
I had shaken off the rest of Sunday’s cobwebs and the ice was behaving more like I would expect. In fact, my first throw was a bit amusing. Derek ordered up something in the middle towards the top of the house. I threw the stone with what I believed to be the appropriate weight, and the sweepers, upon seeing the stone lazily gliding down the ice panicked and started sweeping. Derek walked out to meet them to help. The stone ended up going well into the house. The weight was dead on - they just didn’t realize how fast the ice was!
The rest of the game I had pretty consistent weight…I’m getting to the point where I can start thinking more about aiming and release. We had a substitute vice. I had played against him in another match. He was very helpful, offering tidbits of advice as we went.
The end result was something like 11 to 4. Yikes.