Curling: Week One

This was a strange one.

Our opponent was a team of two couples...and one didn't show up. Well, they did show up right before the 8th and last end. (They misread the schedule which said all rookie teams play at 9:30 this week, except for the the highlighted teams who are playing at 7:30. It's slightly confusing, but everyone else figured it out. To add insult to injury, they live an hour away and have a baby, presumably they hired a sitter to drive two hours and play for ten minutes.)

Anyways, so it was decided that I would play for both teams. I was second position for both teams, throwing two stones for each team, and sweeping for both sides. So I was active on every throw.

The good news...I played much, much better than I had in either of my two games as a sub. I hit a few great draws to the button, but mostly I hit a bunch of nice knockouts. A couple where I threw a red stone and knocked out two yellow. Or I would throw a yellow, tap it off another yellow, and keep both in the house.

But it was a little weird. Because sometimes I had good shots consecutively, canceling out my first good shot. And there was at least two times where the red skip knocked out a red stone that I had thrown to the button.

The team that I am assigned to was yellow, and we were up 5-1 after four. After six it was tied at 6-6. In the seventh we could have scored two but our skip knocked one of ours out. So we had a 7-6 lead going into the last end but they had the hammer. They had two in the edge of the house, and we couldn't get one in. So they won 8-7, with their other two players getting to come in and play the last end.

But it doesn't really matter. Our team wasn't going to contend for the championship anyway, so we might as well lose the first one, take the pressure off.

I left happy. I played great. And I got twice the experience. Good curling.