Athletic Road Trips With Sticks

Until Friday, it had been quite a while since I've gone on a road trip to participate in a team sport that involved the use of sticks. Previously, it was in my lacrosse-playing days. This time, the sticks are more correctly called "brooms" and the sport was curling.

It was an overnight "Mini-spiel", where 4 teams from our club played a game Friday night and Saturday morning against teams from the host club. It included a dinner Friday night -- choices were filet mignon or some fancy shrimp dish -- a reminder that I'm not playing lacrosse anymore. Friday night lodging was free and provided by members of the home club, and we had a cookout lunch on Saturday after the games. Another indication we weren't playing lacrosse was the sushi at the cookout.

All-in-all, it was a great time, and we got to meet some wonderful people. I hope to do it again, but not real soon. My current plan is that I might enter a full bonspiel in January.

Curling-wise we did OK. I played second. Going into the 8th (final) end of the Friday night game, we were up by 2 and had hammer. We somehow gave up 4 to end up losing, 9-7. Then, on Saturday morning, we were up by three going into the last end with hammer. This time we scored three more to make the final 9-3.

I didn't fully understand the tournament scoring. In terms of games, we lost, 6 games to 2. But then they also did something where points were totaled as well as ends won. (I'm not sure I agree with adding ends to points. Would you rather win two 1-point ends, or one 3-point end?) Anyway, there were three awards: The overall cup, which our club didn't win, as well as a small trophy to the highest scoring team for each club. We ended up winning that. Since we have no club trophy case for it, our skip probably should have received it. But, because I mentioned that I have never won anything before (which isn't really true) he let me keep it, at least for a while. See below. I'm so excited! :-)