The Hizzle of T-Fizzle

After DT managed to save a win after losing that huge lead, he seemed to be in brighter spirits at the final men’s match of the year.  We again came out swinging hard coming to a decent lead in the first 2 ends.  Then our opponents slowly whittled away at our lead.  The 7th end was a bit rough for us.  We had annopportunity to steal a point, but ended up giving up two, tying the score 8-8.  However this allowed us to have the hammer in the final end, and going into the final end with a tie score having the hammer is a good spot…the we have been playing, perhaps a better spot than being ahead 3 without the hammer.  We played a fairly aggressive 8th end loading my stones on either side of the house and then trying to keep the approach clean.  It all came down to the final shot…our opponent was sitting one.  Two stones at the inside edge of the 12′ were too close to guess who would be second.  DT  threw a bomb through a tiny hole and blew the shot rock out of there.  We had to measure the other rocks to determine the winner, and we managed to come out on top!  Yay!

Now we take a holiday break.  I don’t think I play again until the Past Presidents tournament and the Cracked Bell.  The Past Presidents is an odd unlisted mens tournament (it does not appear on the website or club calendar) where the men are put into a playdown for a shot against a sort of “dream team” of past club presidents.  That is the first week of Jan, followed that weekend by the Cracked Bell bonspiel in which we have decided to compete so we’ll have at least done it once as a team before we go to Schenectday.

So once again…you start to hit your stride, then they throw a break at you!

A rough double-header took place for us 2 weekends back, with a noon game in the Mixed League and an evening game in the Novice. Sunday afternoon was rough. Early afternoon is “matinee time” and I found that sparking energy is just as difficult in curling as it it on stage. When acting, I can cover it. Most audience members would never know that I was feeling sluggish. I’m not a good enough curler to cover it, though. Between that and having not played since Monday, I felt that little was going right. Yet somehow we managed to eke out a narrow victory. A lot if it had to do with our skilled back end making up for it.

We did have a fun time, though. Our opponents were a group of people who simply don’t take things any more seriously than they need. We were laughing and joking all afternoon. After the match, I learned that one of our opponents is a bagpiper and is going to give me some information on the band. As some of you may know, I’ve dabbled in bagpipes and its always been on my “list,” so perhaps this is the time to cross it off.

The evening game was a beginners game against Mike and Mary’s team. I was going to be stuck skipping the whole match until our club buddies and opposing team captains suggested that we rotate positions. I kinda liked skipping now that I had a little better feel for it. Everyone played fairly well, but we managed to eke out a narrow victory.

Ecstatic from 2 straight wins, I headed to Monday’s match ready to make it three, and we came out strong in the first few ends only to lose the rest. DT is taking it rough. I try to keep his spirits up but he says he just hasn’t been having fun this year. I think part of it is that it’s lonely in the house. You feel responsible for everything because you make the strategic decisions and you have to make the big plays at the end of the end. He won on Friday in a nailbiter…they came to a 9-point lead by end 2 and ended up in tie going into 8, but they pulled it out. He was in good spirits, and it was nice to see him clowning around again.

Almost had a streak going…

We had a grudge match against M&M’s mixed team on Friday. Clan Cherelli showed up to watch along with Ron and Roseanne who valiantly endured the entire match. It was pretty fun to have some people there watching. It was a pretty exciting match and everyone was in good form. We took two in each of the first two ends, and then we traded deuces for the rest of the match. We went into 8 with a hammer and a 2-point lead and managed to hold them to one for the win.

This marked our last match of our first mixed draw, so we had a little party afterwards. After curling a lot with MikeR, he and is wife are going to be scarce for awhile as they are expecting in the spring. Hopefully they’ll still make it out for social events even if they don’t curl. We’ll miss them.

Next year should be interesting. The veritable onslaught of new members from the fall class means that X and I will be classified as an “experienced” front end. Usually newbie front ends get paired with experienced back ends and vice versa to keep things in balance. Well there are so many inexperienced front ends that we will now be paired as an experienced front end with an inexperienced back end (of course back end players are at least experienced in their own right) so it will be a good chance to really build some skills since we may not have a dead shot to rely on in the back.

Tonight - Mens match. This will be the last match for me until 2007. It seems like a recurring theme that just as you start to hit your stride, you end up on a break!

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.

This is the exciting feature where I occasionally look for unsuccessful search queries used here or that lead here from google, and try to answer them.

Someone asked this excellent question.  First: I don’t know the difference between in turn and out turn.  Seriously.  I mean, it’s different for lefties and righties, and even then while I believe that for a right-hander in turn is clockwise, I occasionally see statements to the contrary.  But this is all made moot by the fact that the origin of the terms “in turn” and “out turn” has to do with the way the elbow moved when delivering a stone back in the day.  Due to the way curling has evolved, your elbow really shouldn’t move laterally.  If it does, you’ll probably pull the stone to one side or the other.  Because of this, they don’t even teach the terms at PCC classes anymore - it was confusing the noobs.

At PCC they teach the newbies that the skip holds the broom in one hand and points with the other hand in the direction OPPOSITE the desired direction of curl.  This may seem counter-intuitive.  The skip is pointing to your left even though he expects the stone to curve to your right.  But it’s easy to remember - you just point the handle toward the skip’s hand.  If he points to your right, aim it at 2 o’clock.  If he points to your left, aim at 10 o’clock.  In either case, the handle should be at 12 o’clock when you let go of it, now spinning the right way.  I don’t know if this is a universal custom, but it is definitely the standard practice at PCC.

But there’s another thing to note.  Most of the time there is no question which turn will be required - it’s often implied by the skip’s ice call.  If the skip calls for a draw right to the center and then gives you ice to your right, it should be fairly obvious that the stone is going to have to curl to your left and will need to spin counter-clockwise.  As such, many skips I have seen will dispense with signalling on these kind of shots and signal only when it’s less obvious, or when the thrower asks for clarification.  Interesting tidbit: the PCC house rules actually specify that the skip should always signal for a turn.

Use your head and watch the skip.  As you get to know your skip, you will begin to recognize subtle signals anyway….for instance, he may not actually point with his right hand, but he will hold his broom in his left hand.  But if you’re unsure on any shot, it never hurts to ask. 

Friday night, we were off to Chez Fitz to help prepare for their annual ‘Ween Extravaganza.  Jesse was there to further add to the fun and entertainment.  One highlight included X trying to bake some cookies.  She had asked me to take out a stick of butter from the fridge, turn on the oven, and sit the butter on the oven to soften.  She may have said 1/2 cup of butter or 2 sticks of butter, but most key witnesses claim she only said one.  I placed the butter on the oven, but I did not turn the oven on.  Turning on the oven just to soften butter is absurd!  After giving the butter some time to soften at room temperature, she set out to make the dough and complained that it wasn’t doughy.  After a lot of head scratching, we finally realized that 2 sticks of butter were required.  Things improved immensely with the addition of 100% more butter.

Saturday was our third curling match, marking the opening of the Mixed League.  The Mixed League has an interesting standing format.  You get a point for each end you win plus 3 points for winning the match.  You can lose the match and still get more points than the winner.  It is interesting because it rewards consistent play.  You can get lucky with a big score in one end, but to come out on top, you need to play consistently, winning many ends and not just an occasional big score.

We are teamed up with our favorite instructors from the curling class (sorry, Mike and Mary!  You’ll probably get them in January.) who seem well-known around the club for being Awesome Curlers.  Deanne is a Canuck (being born in Canada apparently gives you +3 to your base curling ability right off the bat) and has curled pretty much her whole life.  Mike R (also on my team in men’s league) was PCC Rookie Of The Year a few years ago.  In addition to being good players, they are both just genuinely really nice people and a lot of fun to play with.

We got killed.  Again.  Maybe it’s me?  Nah, it’s just the way the game goes.  The newbies are newbies and the oldbies are rusty from having the summer off.  We were up against a team consisting of a substitute skip named Craig who looks enough like Jon Voight to be intimidating and is a very solid player, and our training class arch enemies John and Nancy, along with a vice skip whom I did not know and I can’t remember her name.  John and Nancy were both throwing really well.  Their whole team just was more consistent than we were.

Personally, I am getting closer to an optimal position for holding the broom (the head is farther out to the side - I was previously holding it straight in front of me) which has allowed me to keep my balance better.  Many of my throws were very close to their intended line, although I was having trouble with weight, especially towards the end when the ice was beginning to really speed up.  I threw a lot all the way through, and then the next one would barely clear the hog line.  But now that I’m getting my balance down, I can work on weight control.

Broomstacking after the match, we confirmed our suspicions that curling is full of smart people.  Mike and Deanne both have PhDs.  Craig didn’t say he was a PhD, but he did say he is a professor at UPenn, so he at least has a masters.  Many of the people we met have been engineers, psychologists, scientists…it’s definitely a brainy bunch.

After the match, we ran home and changed into costumes for the Halloween party.  We went us George and Jane Jetson.  X made her costume from scratch and it turned out really nice!  My costume was dead simple but it looked good.  We got to the party kinda late.  A lot of Mary’s guests come from far away and stay overnight, so they tend to get started fairly early.  We arrived just in time for Pictionary.  Actually, it’s more like Win Lose or Draw without teams.  People made up words/phrases which made for some interesting ones.  That took quite awhile and things started to slow down after that.  People were beginning to nod off and go to sleep.  We had an early morning ahead of us, so we decided to get on home.

Sunday was the Lupus Loop fundraiser.  We assembled a sizable group for the walk/run.  X had planned to run, but wasn’t really able to finish her training so decided to walk instead.  It would have been a pretty nice day, but the blazing winds made things fairly cold.  Afterwards we went to lunch at CPK where BSchwartz is an AGM/Mayor Of PizzaTown.  I haven’t seen BSchwartz in many months.  It was nice to talk to him for a bit.

Somehow we managed to make it the whole day without getting a spoiler on the Eagles score.  This is unfortunate - had we known the outcome, we would not have wasted our time watching it on TiVo!  Neither of us paid too much attention, though, so we didn’t waste too much on it.

Usually busy weekends drive me nuts, but I felt pretty good after this one.  I did things I wanted to do and had fun doing them.

Tomorrow…more curling.  I’ll then have a break until Saturday.

The difference between the Men’s and Beginners’ leagues is like night and day. On the one hand, this is to be expected - Beginners’ is an instructional league. But even that aside, it keeps a much slower pace and more lighthearted feel from the relaxed chatting on the ice to the lack of broomstacking after the match.

Last night marked both X’s and Mary’s return to the ice. Mike had to travel and will actually not get to play for another week or so. I’m not sure how Mary did, but X was really throwing well. She could use some work on the sweeping, but she’s also small and doesn’t exactly have the weight to really dig a brush head into the ice.

X threw second and I ended up as vice, which is fine with me. I was not throwing well at all, but I was trying to concentrate on the “body drop” part of the delivery and also positioning my broom, which I think needs to be held more out to the side.

We lead for the first few ends, but a few screwups put us behind by the end of the match.

One thing that I think is missing from this league is coaching or expert assistance. The teams are lead by 4 and 5-year veterans, but they readily acknowledge that there is still a LOT to learn. Ideally, there ought to be one or two “experts” on each sheet to help guide the newbies. Despite the captains being quite knowledgeable, there is only so much assistance they can offer from over 100′ away. If there was a coach who was not actually playing in the match, that person could offer assistance/advice on delivery and sweeping techniques as well as teaching etiquette like “don’t kneel on the ice.” As an example, following Mike R’s lead on Monday, we stood near the tee-line as our thrower prepared. This gives you more time to pace the rock and more time to sweep if it’s too light. Most of the newbies want to stand near the hogline since you can’t sweep until it crosses it anyway. The captain is too far away and too busy calling shots and guiding the thrower to correct this, and as an utter noob, no one will follow my example. Years of acting experience has also rigorously trained me in the notion of not directing other actors, so I won’t push others to follow me without being in a position where others are expected to do so. If there was a coach or expert present, they could provide this guidance.

Another example is sweeping. I know full-well that the sweepers autonomously decide to sweep based on the weight of the throw unless the skip makes a call either way based on the path. But, knowing that I’m SUPPOSED to sweep a weak throw doesn’t mean I have yet developed the ability to SPOT a weak throw. A few times our captain reminded us that if the stone is light, we should sweep unless told otherwise and I replied “We didn’t sweep because we thought the stone was going fast enough.” An expert to help you evaluate this would be useful.

Speaking of sweeping, I decided to try sweeping “properly.” the way one naturally holds a broom may not be the best way. By holding the upper hand under the broom with the end of the shaft under your shoulder and the lower hand about halfway down, you get quite a bit of stability. You can essentially lean your full weight on the broom instead of just pushing with your forearms. I does seem to work well.

Mixed League starts Saturday. I expect that to be the middle ground between the serious men and the bumbling beginners!

8:30PM on Sheet 2. After briefly being introduced to my teammates and a few ineffectual words of reassurance, we stepped out onto the ice and shook hands. One player said the leads do the coin toss and handed me a quarter. We lost the toss, so I was told to pick our color (the coin toss winner gets the strategic benefit of choosing whether they want the hammer first…the loser gets the cosmetic benefit of the prettiest color). I choose blue, they chose to take the hammer, next thing I know I’m standing at the hack for the first time in 6 months trying to simultaneously recall the delivery procedure and watch the skip’s ice call.

We got killed. I think it was 13-3 when we stopped counting after the 7th end (of 8 ). To be honest, the score doesn’t accurately reflect the way we played. Basically, some missed clutch shots allowed the other team to pick up 5 points here and there that could just as easily have been 1 or 2 for us.

Personally, I did better than I expected. In the training classes, I felt lucky if I got a stone to stay in play. Most shots went too far or not far enough. Of 16 stones thrown, I think 12 or 13 of them at least stayed in play. Of course only 2 or 3 of those wound up anywhere near their intended goals. I suppose that’s the next step.

Sweeping is definitely hard work and had me huffing and puffing on a few occasions. Hopefully doing this 3 times a week will help me lose some weight One nice thing is that it isn’t constant sprinting and stopping. Sometimes you have some hard stones and sometimes you get to rest for awhile.

Knowing your skip’s voice is an important skill. There were a few occasions where sweepers did the wrong thing because they either heard the another skip’s command or ignored our skip’s command thinking it came from the other skip. Another time, I thought why skip had called me to take out an opposing rock. To confirm, I called down “Take it out?” and heard both a “Yes” and “Draw weight,” which I believed meant to hit the other stone, but not too hard. Turns out the “yes” came from the other sheet - I was supposed to hook my stone in BEHIND the existing one. To further confound things, my stone actually did hit the other stone and knock it aside!

Thursday night kicks off the beginners league. I’ll try and hit the broom once or twice this time.

It’s offical. At this weekend’s Put In The Plug Party (the name refers solely to plugging in the chiller and making the ice and is also symbolic - the ice has been there for at least a week) we met our club “buddies” who handed us our official Philly Curling Club nametags. It’s so social a sport that everyone is supposed to wear nametags at the club so its easier to get to know people and remember their names. I could be worng, but I think it’s also customary to wear them when visiting other clubs (which would explain why the club name is also on there).

They ought to come up with some sort of pinning ceremony to do at the party to sort of initiate new members and introduce them to the new members. Maybe make them walk barefoot across the ice and solemnly swear to uphold the honor of the game? I’ll have to pitch that to the membership committee.

We got to the party a bit too early. The “cocktail hour” was 6-7:30 and by a veritable perfect storm of flukes, we actually got there right at 6. There were very few people there…none of the scant few people that we knew, and we had not yet received our nametags, making us feel conspicuously noobish. As the drinks flowed and more people came things improved and we began meeting more and more people.

Some interesting tidbits I picked up: curling is SO social that its pretty much compulsory for the winners to buy the losers to drink and to sit around and talk for a bit after the match.

Few new curlers buy their own equipment. Now the gear is by no means cheap, but its not super expensive, and the cost seems justifiable compared to always having to scrounge at the club for key equipment, especially sliders and grippers. People seemed surprised that we had ordered equipment. Mike points out that having clean shoes is important (debris on the ice can cause unpredictable behavior - another benefit to sweeping) so he would probably buy a new pair of sneakers anyway and the cost of those plus a slider would likely be as much as a cheap pair of curling shoes. In fact, the club recommends buying new shoes and using them only for curling, even if they are not curling shoes.

Curlers trade club pins. When you visit another club for a bonspiel (curlers call their tournaments bonspiels) it is customary to bring a bunch of your club’s pins and trade your pins for pins from other clubs.

2007 marks the 50th anniversary of Philadelphia Curling Club. Special commemorative club pins have been made and there is also badging on the ice.

Only in the last 10-15 years has PCC really learned to manage ice. Prior to this, the club ice was not so great and hindered curlers’ abilities.

The PCC used to be a “closed” club with membership requiring sponsorship. At some point, an aging club population decided to open up membership to walk-ins and the club now enjoys a sizable membership across a wide range of ages.

A lot of engineers curl.

My first match is tonight. I have not thrown a stone since about April. Fortunately my equipment came today and my shoes fit, so I won’t have that holding me back.

I will post a report. There will probably be no pics unless X comes but I have a feeling she needs to work on her ‘ween costume.

I would like to take some time to expand on a discussion I’ve seen over the past few years about the validity of curling as an Olympic sport.  Having now curled myself, I feel that I have a better basis for entering into such a discussion.

Thanks to AKA BDan’s comment on Lesson 2 for making me think of it, and also for proving that someone other than my brother actually comes through here on occasion :-).  BDan said “Sadly, bowling is not an Olympic sport.”  I’m not sure if he was genuinely lamenting that bowling is not an Olympic sport, or if he was offering the commentary that if we can call curling an Olympic sport, surely we can do the same for bowling.

So why does curling belong in the Olympics over say…golf or bowling?

Here’s a few reasons, loosely ordered upon how convincing they are.  It should always be kept in mind that curling is a WINTER Olympic event.

1. Physical strength/skill.  While you don’t have to have a Mr. Universe physique to curl, you still do need some strength.  The stones weigh 20kg and are by no means light.  The harder you can plow the head of a broom into the ice, the more impact your sweeping has.  You also need to be able to do this for over 3 hours without much of a break.  Attentive readers will note that strength is helpful, if not required, in most any other game from actual Olympic sports like skeet shooting and equestrian to golf and bowling.
2. Length of games.  Golf is too long for an individual event.  Most individual events last under an hour, especially in the Winter Olympics.  Bowling is a decent length of time.  At around 3 hours, curling fits in well with the time it takes to play other team events such as hockey.
3. Strategic.  There isn’t much strategy in bowling.  I’ve never come across a situation where choosing NOT to try to roll a strike would be advantageous.  Golf, there is some strategy on how you choose your shots, but again, there is never a time when choosing to bogey a hole that you could have birdied would make sense.  Of course, there isn’t much strategy to a lot of other Olympic events, but it does set itself apart from the sports over which pundits often debate whether they should actually be called “sports.”
4. Team sport.  There are precious few team sports in the Winter Olympics.  Are there really any other than hockey?

But the real reason, the most convincing one is that, given all these other features working its favor, the thing that puts it over the top is:  ICE

Every Winter Olympic sport is played on ice or snow.  As a result, this limits the Winter Olympics to a fairly small variety of events.  There’s basically 5 variations of skating, 10 variations of skiing, including skiing fast and shooting a gun, a few variations on snowboarding (itself a variation of skiing), 5 or 6 variations on sledding, and hockey (which could conceivably be lumped in with skating).

Curling, then, represents what could well be the only other ice/snow sport that requires physical ability, strategy and teamwork, and DOES NOT involve the already saturated skating/skiing/snowboarding/sledding angle.  It is a “winter sport,” yet it is completely different from any other winter sports.

While golf and bowling are, in my opinion, sports in their own rights, golf could never be a winter sport, and bowling, while it could be, does not include ice/snow and would represent a big departure from tradition.  But there is a lot more variation in the summer sports - you’ve got running, jumping, gymnastics, paddling, riding, shooting, fighting, swordfighting, softball, basketball, soccer.  There really isn’t all the much need for a niche event.  I imagine cricket would make it to the Olympics before golf or bowling.

Fact is, curling may well last as an Olympic sport simply because there’s no other contenders.

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!