Hurry hard

I attended one of the Fall “Learn to Curl” classes held by the fabulous folks at the Potomac Curling Club today. Here’s what I learned in both the lessons and our 3 end game.

Ice is hard
You find this out when you start to sweep because the fact is that most of us aren’t used to keeping upright on ice and sweeping requires that you not only pace the stone but that you work your hands while you’re doing it. Our instructor told us flat out that we would fall while we were sweeping. And I did…four times. While I was the first to go down, I feel better about the fact that I wasn’t the only one going home with bruises in embarrassing places.

Curling is exercise
It may not look like it on TV but sometimes those 44 pound stones move fast even when they aren’t moving all that fast so there were times when I and my fellow sweeper were practically running down the sheet. Not only were we moving fast, we had to put pressure on the broom and move it in a tight little space to be at all effective. And all that takes not only lung stamina but muscle power.

Flexibility matters
But it isn’t everything. Spending 18 years squatting down behind the plate to catch a softball probably put me ahead of some of the people my age who were in my beginning class. Since curling is billed as a sport you can enjoy at any age, accommodations were made for the people in my group who had bad knees, and for the 68 year-old ladies who drove down from Harrisburg, PA. Oh, and that whole squat and push the stone thing…a lot harder than it looks.

Sportsmanship counts
So does fun. Many of us were just in this for fun and, much like chess, you are playing against yourself as much as you’re playing against the other team. If your sweepers did well, tell them. Even if they weren’t perfect, tell them it’s OK. Oh, and at Potomac the winner buys the first round.

Communication counts almost as much
OK, so for winning the game purposes communication probably counts more than sportsmanship but without the sportsmanship would it really be as much fun? As skip you have to make sure the person throwing knows what you’re calling, and when you’re sweeping you have to make sure you’re coordinating with your fellow sweeper so you aren’t knocking brooms instead of helping the stone move along.

The other thing I learned as we played a game to try to solidify the concepts from the lesson portion of our class: I’ve got the skip’s yell. I doubt I’ll ever be as loud as Eve Muirhead, and I’ll certainly never be able to do that thing she does to the R, but if I ever get good enough to skip at least my sweepers will be able to hear me.