Curl Troy

Showed up Wednesday for league to find out that CCC's ice scraper was broken.  Since they were not able to scrape the ice clean of frost, Bruce and I had a lesson on what frost does to a curling stone.  It stops it.  Dead.  No matter how hard we tossed it we were not able to get it even half way down the ice.  Forget about brushing too.  Felt like trying to sweep sandpaper with a glue brush.  Wasn't happening.

All wasn't lost as we were able to still slide across it and therefore were able to practice shooting out of the hack.  But after 20 or so straight stones it starts to take it's toll and we called it a night.

Saturday was the first day of the new instructional league.  Since we were more experienced players and CCC was short on instructors Bruce and I were given our own groups to teach.  Not going to lie I wasn't too thrilled about it.  Didn't really see what I could teach since my delivery is still all funky, but it went smooth.  Things that I learned on my second session I was able to teach on their first.  During the game I helped the skips from both teams make calls and choose strategy.  Game ended up in a tie and went on to "overtime" called Skip Stones.  The skip from each team has one shot.  Whomever make it closer to the button wins the game.  My squad lost in overtime.

Sunday Bruce and I did the usual Skip/Vice setup (Bruce/skip, me/vice).  In the first game we lost 8-6.  Even though we lost, Bruce and I were complimented by CCC members for our skip/vice play.  It's nice to be getting respect/recognition for our play.

Another day of league where nothing really happened. This time there was no instruction at the beginning; we were sent straight into a game.

I was the Lead on my team, a position I really do not care for. Since the ice changes during the game due to the brushing and room temp I would prefer to watch at least 4 rocks go before I'm up. In playing Lead I feel my first stone every end is a "throw away" just to see how the ice is acting. While not all my first stones are horrible, very few go where I want them to go.

I'm starting to get the feel of my shots. While my delivery stance is still horrible I find myself 70% of the time getting my stones to where the skip wants them. Think I could get that number up once I get my stance down. As of now I'm still finding myself dragging my push knee, can't quite keep full balance on my slide foot and broom alone. Doing this slows my momentum rather quickly. To compensate this I release the stone very early in the launch, using two fingers and my thumb to get the turn once the stone starts to pull out of reach. While it is working for me at the moment it affects my accuracy enough that I'm pretty bad at takeout shots.

Brushing is getting easier as the weeks go by. Now a days after a game I can actually feel my arms afterword.

Since the end of curling season is coming up at the CCC I'll start adding some information on Curl Troy's progress in the blog. Until next time....

The last few weeks Bruce and myself have been making the trip to Columbus to participate in the Thursday Instructional League. Today we were lucky enough to be able to sub into the regular league that plays that same night. Well, lucky that we got the experience; Unlucky in that we were DESTROYED afterword.

Biggest thing was the pace of the game. While not as fast as competition games it was about 5 times faster than we were used to. You have about a whole 10 seconds of rest before you have to be ready to brush again. Since we were used to almost a minute between shots I was almost in tears.

Besides that the night went great. Bruce and I eventually settled as Lead and made great shots for our teams (for those that don't know Lead is the team member that shoots the first two stones). Here's hoping that next Thursday we'll be able to do the same.

     Today was a rather easy day, not much to really talk about.
 
     The focus of today's class was aiming off to the left or right in the hack.  Almost everybody up until today just pushed off straight ahead and moved the stone to the left or right with their hand.  In doing this accuracy was severely decreased.  We learned that to make an accurate shot to the left/right you need to point your entire body toward the shot.  In doing so accuracy improves dramatically.
 
     Using what we learned the ensuing game was a breeze.  My first game as Skip ended in a 5-1 victory.

     First night of Instructional League.  Arrived at the club an hour early and got to watch the last part of ice prep.  Interesting process of scrape, buff, and pebble.  After the ice was ready we were able to practice tossing stones with an instructor for 30 min before the League started.  The benefits of showing up early...
 
     When the League started we had 30 minutes of "class."  During this time they refreshed us on the delivery motions, brushing technique and Skip calls.  Afterwords we were set into teams and faced off against each other.
 
     The first game went great.  Bruce, Steph, Martina, and myself have proven to be a formidable team amongst the other rookies.  We won in Four Ends with a 6-3 victory.  Highlighted by a 4 point steal in the first end.  Once the rush of playing had eroded my body let me know just how physically demanding the sport really is.  I felt like somebody had taken me out back and pounded me with a baseball bat; and that was after just playing half of a full game.
 
     Lucky for us the next League after ours had spots open and we decided to join in on that one as well.  This time I was paired with a group of three ladies and faced against Bruce in a game.  Unfortunately Bruce and I were not able to Skip our teams; a test of strategy that I was looking forward to.  Instead my team was skipped my a "strategist," aka someone that didn't want to brush.  Ended up being a close game until the last end, where, with my Skip's strategy in question, my team lost 5-3.  Once again after the rush of play ended my body let me know about it.  Pain all over.  Hell, even my lungs hurt. 
 

     Not really knowing what I was getting into I signed up for a teaching clinic at the Columbus Curling Club with my friends Bruce and Steph.  Besides watching it on television I had no real idea what curling was about or even how it was played.  It just looked like shuffle board on ice to me.  Today my eyes were opened to a great sport that is a blast to play.
 
      Heading in I had a lot of preconceptions about the sport, by the end of the night they were all shattered.
 
     First I figured the ice was roughly the same as hockey ice and I'd be spending most of the night on my butt.  In reality curling ice and hockey ice are like night and day.  The pebbling of the ice for curling makes the ice easy to walk on; you almost need to will yourself to fall.
 

Well Stephanie, Donald and myself made the trek to Columbus Curling Club to take their learn to curl clinic. It was a blast! I can't wait to get something started closer to home but in the meantime we all signed up for an instructional league on Sunday afternoons. Got a chance to talk to some of the founders of the club and make some connections which will help us get started here in Troy. They started in a very similar fashion to how we will start - on arena ice. Not the most ideal way to curl but certainly better than not curling at all. It will be a great opportunity for us to get started, build a membership and some stability before trying to get our own ice.