Friday Night’s Alright for Curling?

Last weekend I joined the YAGs group for an evening of curling — that’s right, the Scottish “sport” the Canadians made famous (at least from my North American perspective). I won’t lie and say that I went for anything other than the novelty, but it did make for quite a fun time.

If you haven’t caught this strange-looking event during the past couple winter Olympics, here’s the basic idea: there are two teams of four that compete against each other in something that’s a bit like bocce ball on ice. Each person wears a pair of special shoes, one slippery and one with traction, to move about on the ice. A “rock” or “stone” is slid out of a starting block and glides down the court, hopefully ending up in the concentric circles designating the scoring area. If it appears the stone will be short, teammates can rapidly scrub the ice in front of it with brooms to ideally give it some more distance. Scoring is based on the team closest to the center of the scoring area.

I had a bit of a rough go at my first couple attempts, but made up for it with a shot that our instructor said was pretty much the perfect curl (bypassed the other team’s guard stone and ended up close to the center). Anyway, enough boring writing. Here are some photos:


The instructor using a magnet board to explain the rules


Ollie, mid-curl


Darryl and I get swept up in the action (photo by Andrea Otte)


Stones


Me in action


The red stone in the foreground was my “perfect” shot.


weekend warrior