I admit it…I am what’s known as a “couch curler”…I have watched and enjoyed curling every winter for the last 30 years or so (I can’t play because of my bad knees). It all started when I was about eighteen…I was just coming off my Wayne Gretzky crush, when I stumbled on a Junior Curling event on TV. It was 1980, and skip John Kawaja from Northern Ontario won it all. He was gorgeous (Wayne who?)!
John played Third for Ed Werenich's winning 1983 Brier Team...that's John second from the right...photo by Doug Shanks, Canadian Press
Having been made aware of my love for a sport that causes many Americans to scratch their heads and ask “What’s that?”, my friend Todd urged me to do a piece on curling: “Wendy…you really, really, really need to post something about the sport of curling.” The Brier (the Canadian national men’s tournament – the Super Bowl of curling) was just played this past weekend, and I like my readers to be happy, so…here goes…I present “Couch Curling for Dummies”, a fun guide which will allow you to impress your friends with your vast knowledge of a sport that most people south of the 49th Parallel don’t know exists!
The Game Has Ends and is Called a Draw Even When the Score Isn’t Tied
A traditional curling match or draw has ten ends, which aren’t “endings”, but sections of the game, like innings in baseball or quarters in football (a match can be shorter than ten ends, if one team is getting their butts kicked and forfeits!). Each team delivers eight stones for each end. The ends themselves aren’t timed individually, but each team has 73 minutes to throw their stones during the regular game, and the option of taking two 60-second timeouts. If extra ends are required, they get an extra 10 minutes and one timeout per end to play.
The Team Has Ends
Each curling team or rink has afront end: the lead and the second. The lead delivers his two stones, followed by the second, who throws his two. These folks are the main sweepers for the team, usually the muscles of the outfit. The team’s back end is where the brains are, the third (or mate, usually only in the platonic sense) and the skip. The third plays after the second, and offers advice to the skip about team strategy. The third also sweeps when the lead and the second throw their stones. The skip is the boss, and is usually the best player on the team (he almost never sweeps, unless a stone needs “extra help” to get where they want it to go!). He calls the shots…skips need to be both smart and good yellers (see “What the Skip Yells” below). People who curl nearly always have day jobs…curling doesn’t pay the big bucks like hockey, and players usually travel on their own dime! Curlers are people you’d run into when you’re getting groceries or picking up your kids at school. I’ve never heard of a curler using “performance-enhancing” drugs.
The Game is Played on a Sheet With Houses and Hacks at Each End
The sheet is a carefully-prepared patch of ice about 150 feet long by 16.5 feet wide. Small droplets of water are intentionally sprayed on the ice that cause irregularities on the surface (pebble), allowing the rocks to curl (travel in a curved fashion rather than a straight line). At each end of the sheet, there are three concentric rings, a red one measuring 4′, surrounded by a white one measuring 8′, inside a blue one measuring 12′…these are the houses, or the targets that the players are shooting for. In the middle of the house is the button, a one-foot circle which is the bullseye…stones of the same colour closest to the button at the conclusion of an end will score (see “How To Score Points”). Twelve feet behind each button are the hacks, two rubber-lined holes 3″ from the centre line which give the thrower something to push against with his foot when delivering the throw (he would choose the appropriate hole based on which foot he pushes with). There are also horizontal lines on the sheet: the near hog line is closest to the hack…the player must let go of his rock before the stone touches the near hog line, and the rock must cross the far hog line (without crossing the back line or touching the sides) to be in play. The T-line goes through the middle of the house, and is the point where the front end has to stop sweeping once the rock touches it. Only the skip can sweep the rock after it’s crossed the T-line, and this is also the only point at which the other team can sweep a rock.
Curling sheet – CL: Centreline • HOL: Hogline • TL: Teeline • BL: Backline • HA: Hackline with Hacks • FGZ: Free Guard Zone (diagram from Wikipedia.org)
Everybody Has A Broom, Rocks, a Slider and a Gripper
Each team member carries a broom, which is really a long-handled brush used to balance when delivering a rock, clean the ice in front of a stone (sweeping lightly), and sweep a rock, which means really digging into the ice in front of a stone while it’s in motion to make it go faster and straighter (this is where the “muscle” comes in for the front end of the team). The rocks are 38 to 44 lb. polished chunks of granite fitted with coloured handles, usually either red or yellow in tournament play. A narrow 5″ ring on the bottom of the rock is the only part of the stone that actually touches the ice. Sliders are slipped over the toe of one shoe of the curlers on their sliding foot so that they can glide easily down the ice when delivering their shots. The other shoe is their gripper. Some curlers use curling gloves to grip the rock or the broom more easily. Players use stopwatches to track rock speed and make decisions about strategy.
Taking A Shot
To deliver a shot, a player crouches and places his gripper shoe in the hack with the stone in one hand (resting on the ice) and his broom in the other. Aiming toward the skip who is holding his broom where he wants the stone at the other end of the sheet, the player rests his own broom on the ice for balance as he pulls the stone back, then lunges smoothly out from the hack pushing the stone ahead while the slider foot is moved in front of the gripper foot, which trails behind.
The Canadian team taking a shot at the 2006 Olympics (photo by Bjarte Hetland)
Once the rock comes out of the shooter’s hand, it’s up to the sweepers to make sure it gets where it’s supposed to go…the skip tells them what to do.
Types of Shots
Making good shots in curling takes years and years of practice, as well as a steady hand. Good sweepers help too.
A draw shot is one that is simply sent into play without knocking another stone out. A freeze is where a stone is shot so that it lands as close as possible to another stone already in play, and makes it nearly impossible to take out. The draw and the freeze are the precision shots, because they travel much more slowly than the takeout shots, and are harder to control.
A takeout is one where the shooter is removing another stone in play by hitting it with his own: in a peel, the shooter hits the other stone hard enough that the shooter’s stone will also go out of play (if he wants to blank the end – see “How To Score Points”). A raise is where the shooter uses the delivered stone to bump another one forward, and a raise takeout is a shot in which the delivered stone bumps a second stone which in turn knocks a third stone out of play (also called a runback).
What the Skip Yells
1. “Hard” or “Hurry Hard“. Tells the sweepers to sweep harder and faster.
2. ”Off” or “Whoa”. Tells the sweepers to stop sweeping a rock, but not necessarily cleaning it.
3. ”Right Off“. Tells the sweepers not to sweep or clean a rock.
4. “Never“. This lets the sweepers know that the rock needs to curl and that they should stay off of it.
Note: These commands rarely work with children or if one is caught in a traffic jam.
How to Score Points – Slide Softly and Carry a Big Hammer
Points are scored after each end depending on how many rocks a team has closest to the button in the house without an opposing stone intermixed (one point for each rock)…with good players, it is rare to score more than 3 points in a given end (common scores are 1 or 2). The rock closest to the button is called the shot rock, while the next closest one is second shot, and so on. Only one team can score points in each end.
The team who delivers the last rock of the end is said to have the hammer - this is a huge advantage. Who has the hammer in the first end is usually determined by a coin toss…after that, whoever didn’t score in the preceding end has the hammer in the next one. If the end is blanked, the team who has the hammer keeps it for the next end. If a team manages to score in an end where they don’t have the hammer, it’s called a steal (no one is penalized in this case).
After the Game
Once a draw is finished, the players generally shake hands, gather up their stuff, and get off the ice. Later, they may stack the brooms, which means socializing with each other or their opponents, usually over a beer or two. They might also trade curling pins which are often collected by players and spectators alike, and displayed on sweaters, vests and hats.
Pin collectors Roger and Bob compare notes at this year's Brier...photo by Morris Lamont, London Free Press
The next time you’ve got three hours to kill on a winter weekend, flip on a curling game on TSN, and curl up on the couch with some popcorn! I’m looking forward to watching the PVR of The Brier tonight, even though I already know who won. I’ll be yelling “Hurry hard!” at Glen Howard’s Ontario team!
I’m Not a Ghost, But Yesterday I Played One in Real Life…
This isn't me...I'm a lot taller! (photo from daddytypes.com)
Have you ever had one of those days when you wonder if you’re invisible, a mere figment of someone else’s overactive imagination? That was my day yesterday…all day!
It all started in the morning, after I arrived at the bookstore and sat down at my computer. As per my routine, I updated our store’s Facebook page with a “Today in History” fact and a book relevant to it, and added a daily quote about books. Then I opened my Hotmail. Since it was Monday, there were lots of new blog posts to comment on…
I opened the first one, read it, typed my comment and posted it. Everything was going swimmingly until I reached the fourth new post. I read the post, chuckled heartily, wrote a pithy reply and hit the “Post Comment” button, making sure to tick the box so I would receive notification of further comments. The page refreshed, and my clever comment had disappeared into the vast realm of cyberspace, never to be seen again! After a few choice words (none of which were nice), I reconstructed my response as best I could, and attempted to repost. ARRGGH! Gone! I thought, “Maybe it’s my computer.” I rebooted, and reopened all my windows. Version #3 of my formerly hilarious comment was a mere shadow of its earlier incarnations, which I suppose doesn’t really matter, because it vanished too! I gave up on that one…I was sure that person’s blog had technical difficulties.
I opened the next new post in my e-mail. Another brilliant post! I congratulated the writer on his wit and writing skill, and sent my compliments hurtling once again into Never Never Land! I tried once more (are you familiar with Einstein‘s definition of insanity: doing something over and over and expecting different results?). Remembering one of the tag lines from The IT Crowd, “Have you tried turning it off and on?”, I not only rebooted, but flipped the router off and on as well. That should do it!
With my Hotmail window reopened, I clicked on another new post. This one was about blogrolls, a topic dear to my heart. I offered my input in a couple of paragraphs, and confidently “posted” my comment. NOT! I looked around and briefly considered sticking my head in the oven, but our microwave was far too small…Instead, I sent an urgent-sounding e-mail to WordPress Support:
Subject: My Comments are Invisible!
I made comments on other people’s blogs (multiple times). I saw: NOTHING!!! (one time when I was smart enough to copy and paste a comment before I sent it, I got a notification that it was a duplicate comment…still nothing showed up!). I expected my comments to be visible!
I have cleared my cache and rebooted my computer (twice).
Help please!!!
Wendy
A little while later, I got a nice e-mail from a “happiness engineer” at WordPress apologizing for the “inconvenience” (at that point I’d been trying to post comments for more than an hour!) and advising me to send details to Akismet (the spamcatcher). “They’ll be able to sort you out.” I really hoped that somebody could…and maybe they could fix my problem with commenting while they were at it! I sent a similar e-mail to Akismet, explaining my difficulties and imploring them to do everything in their power to remedy them! I continued to read new posts, but knew that commenting on them at this point would probably be useless…I also wrote this post so that my friends would know that I wasn’t ignoring them on purpose. I contacted a couple of the bloggers via Facebook, one of whom told me that my comments had ended up in her spam bucket.
In the afternoon, we had some of our regular customers come into the bookstore: a couple of book dealers from Fredericton accompanied by a friend who was a book collector. The collector inquired about books by Mika Publishing (which happens to be located in Belleville, Ontario near where I grew up). I checked our database, and found we had a Mika book about Lunenburgh, and asked Dad to locate it in its box with the other Loyalist-related material. I went into the other room with one of the book dealers to find something for him. Dad came back with the book and asked me what he should do with it. “Show it to the guy who asked about Mika books!” I replied.
“Why…is it Mika?” Dad asked.
“Yes!” I answered, barely concealing my annoyance. Is this thing on? After Dad left the room, the dealer I was talking to burst out laughing…
“I wouldn’t have believed that if I hadn’t heard it for myself!” he said.
“Multiply that by 9 hours a day for 11 years,” I answered. “And he lives with me too! It’s a wonder I still have my sanity.”
Jim came and picked up Anna and I, and we headed for home. Hope had an appointment at the after hours clinic for 6:15, and we would have to hurry if we wanted to eat before we left again!
We bolted some Sloppy Joes and fries, and arrived early at the office. The doctor wrote a prescription for Hope. We took it to the drugstore and dropped it off…the woman at the counter told us it would be ready in about twenty minutes. To kill time, we went to the dollar store and looked for things that Hope and Brianna needed for school projects. We amassed quite a pile of stuff between the three of us, and took it to the checkout (there was no one there). Eventually a clerk came from the back and called to us from the other counter, “I can help you over here!”
“I was afraid of that!” I answered while smiling through gritted teeth, as I tried to scoop up our 57 items to move them.
“Oh, I can help you with that,” she said, cheerfully. We paid for our purchases and went back to the drugstore. There were six people in line at the prescription counter…Hope and I took our place at the back of the line. The customer who was holding up the line had a prescription that her insurance company wasn’t covering the full cost of, and she couldn’t seem to grasp the fact that she needed to ask her doctor to call them. We’d been in line more than ten minutes when one of the pharmacists came out and asked if anyone had any questions or if we were all picking up prescriptions. No one had any questions.
The pharmacist asked, “Who’s next?” and a lady who’d been standing off to my left (not in line) piped up.
“I’m just here to pick up my prescription.”
I thought, “That’s what we’re all here for, Lady…that’s why we’re in this line.”
She continued, “I was here before…I just came back!” Guess who got served before I did! I had Hope pinch me to make sure I really existed…
When we got home, I went to my computer and opened my e-mail. Still no response from Akismet, but I decided to give commenting another shot. I picked a blog I’d already tried to comment on, and typed a message about commenting earlier, explaining that the comment had probably gone into the spam. I crossed my fingers and toes as my mouse hovered over the “Post Comment” button. I clicked it. SUCCESS! Hooray!
Apparently, I’m not a ghost after all!
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