Good Gravy! It’s A Streak!
9-3 after 7 ends: CPK manages a second straight victory! We were playing against a full 4-person roster this time, and luck was on our side. Sure, we played pretty well, but it seems like there are things that can happen on the ice that you never really consider. For instance, in the first end I threw a shot wide onto a ridge. That stone smacked into a corner guard and landed smack on the button. Some games you never get these lucky breaks, some games they all fall your way.
As I said once before, the final score can be deceiving. This looks like a blowout only because we stole one 5-point end. In a later end the other team was setting up to take 5 or 6 of their own. We had a choice of trying to freeze to their shot rock (freeze meaning to put our rock right next to theirs, making it pretty much impossible to remove) or just trying to bury one under cover off to the side. The freeze is a much tougher shot with potentially disastrous results - too hard and you’ll bump the target stone and leave enough of a gap to be chipped out. Too soft and you still leave enough of a gap to be chipped out. So we tried the draw and ended up throwing the freeze anyway. There was enough space that if the other team got the hit just right, they could blow us out but we were fortunate that our stone stuck around and didn’t move too much. Instead of getting 5 points they got just 1.
I picked up some nice pearls of wisdom after the match about guarding more. I have a habit of hesitating to guard a single point. My instinct is that I should have at least 2 good, solid counters before I try to protect them. Unless my lone counter is way out in the open. But Mike M. pointed out that when you don’t have the hammer, and especially against a stronger team (one that does well on takeouts), leaving a point unguarded in the hopes of getting more points is likely to cost you all the points in the long run. Once we had a long lead, I guarded a lot more singles, but early in the game I left some open where if this were not beginners league they probably would have been long gone.
So to my playbook of taps, draws and the occasional takeout, I will add guards.
And our streak? It will end in the bonspiel this weekend, but it was fun while it lasted.