Adventures in Curling: day two

Last night we got to play five ends (not quite a full 8 end recreational game) but good enough for our novice level.

Our team decided to rotate positions so I got to play one of everything, and vice-skip twice.

So five ends, that means I got to take 10 shots in an hour and a half. Spoilers: only my first and last shot were good.

I came out of the gate with a good shot that landed in the house and eventually scored.

My last shot was a perfect draw to the red circle, though it was tapped out by the next shot. In that 5th end, no one had gotten any in the house. I get one in the four foot and then the next guy does the same thing landing where I was and tapping me back.

In between, I had trouble making it pass the hog line or keeping it straight. I've got instructors in my ear telling me to do new things after every shot and I ended up overthinking a bunch of shots.

Here's the summary of ends, I was on the red team again.

1st:: Red 2 (vice-skip)
2nd: Red 1 (skip)
3rd: Yellow 1 (lead)
4th: Red 1 (second)
5th: Yellow 2 (vice-skip)

So the final ended up being Red 4-3. But we had better shots all night. They had a couple clutch shots that kept it close. In the second end, we had two on the button, but they had the hammer, and they managed to knock one out. And in the fifth end, I thought I would score one for mine in the red circle, and in their last three shots they get two scorers.

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The game really is like golf. You can hit one great shot and think you have it figured out. And then duff four in a row. But it is really satisfying to land one on the green. I'm using to playing individual sports. It feels much worse to hit a poor shot and feel like you left your team down.

Also in golf if you land 6 feet from the pin, no one can knock your ball into the lake.