Wednesday, February 25, 2004

As one curling player said to another...

"Let's go get stoned." Ok, bad joke, but it's the best I could come up with for today. I just came back from a fantastic curling match against my old school, and my team did great, despite the inexperience. Our boys team won 6-3, and girls won 7-4 with an amazing 4 point end at the last moment. For those of you unfamilliar with Curling, it is probably one of the few sports left played exclusively in Canada, or so I assume, since I never see it anywhere else. Our school is in close proximity with the local curling club, so our Economics teacher, being the great guy that he is, offers us the chance to play curling during the winter. This be my first year, but so far, I really like it. Curling is played on a "sheet" about 10-12 feet wide and is slightly longer than a hockey rink. The two ends of the sheet have "houses" which are red and blue target rings painted on the ground. The two teams each throw 8 stones in a single "end" (or round) and try to get as close to the center as possible. The closest team to the center gets the point, and the more stones the team has in the center, the more points, but if a stone from the other team lies between the stone closest to the center and the rest, then the team closest only gets 1 point. (Apologies, it's fairly hard to explain without some diagram.) For a common misconception about curling, the ice, despite what it might appear on TV, is not smooth, but very grainy and covered with tiny pebbles of ice. Thet's where the brooms come in. The team grabs their brooms and sweep the ice as their stone goes by, this makes the stone go faster, and it doesn't curl as much. Curling players have to remember to use more energy in the beginning, and turn it down later on, as the ice becomes more smooth. Both teams also have a "skip", who is the guy who stands at the other end of the sheet, in the house, and is basically the head strategist, as he tells the guy shooting the stone where to aim, what spin to give it (so that it curls in the right direction), and coordinates the two sweepers, telling them when to sweep (when the stone moves too slow or deviates from the path) and when to stop (when the stone is too fast or is about to do something bad, like hit another stone.) I am proud to say I've played skip a couple of times, and was pretty good, but my weakness is predicting the speed of the stone, as it is hard to tell from far away. So...with one skip, one person shooting, and two sweepers, there are four players on a team. During a game, they rotate who shoots the stone, each team member shooting two stones (the skip always shoots last, and the guy who shot before him skips for him.) There you go, those are the basics of curling, my new winter sport of choice. In other news, little as it may be, I designed a front and back cover for the Laeth E'Thae album I'm working on, and I'll try and post a link later. So long folks, and don't hit your head as you leave. -Won-daa-shot

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