Clintonville

Doug invited me onto his curling team for the Clintonville Bonspiel. “This year, they have special wooden curling stones for first event winner. It’d be great to win one.” 

I met teammates Jim and Jason from the Green Bay Curling Club 10 minutes before our first match. We were a purpose-built team for the match, Clintonville being midway between Point and Green Bay.

·         Jason    Lead. First year curler

·         Kurt      Second.

·         Jim       Vice-skip. Long-time curler. Teamed up with Doug on numerous occasions when both lived in LaCrosse 18 years ago.

·         Doug     Skip. Former high-level curler including national competition and Olympic trials.

Welcome to three days in the hyper-analog world of curling. A typical shot:

Skip calls the shot from the house (target) 150’ away, some spoken, mostly thru broom gestures.  - Thru the port (between two guard rocks), sure down-to onto counter on the four foot. Called shot is to cross over and get a little roll under cover, bumping it back to out-count them. Plan B is to just sit on it and set us up for later. We’ll see. Don’t be short. I need about back four weight, just a draw.

Shooter - Slower than yesterday?

Previous shooter/sweeper - A ‘lil. Watch that side tho, it’s seen a few rocks.

Shooter shoots… - It’s a little wide.

Sweeper calls - Weights good. Mebbe a lil light.

Skip - Gotta curl. Where are we?

Sweeper - It’s light, top eight – top twelve, gotta go. ~Sweepers start sweeping.

Skip - All the way, lines good. Lines real good. Every bit. Every bit.

We make the port. Skip calls us off once through to allow the rock to curl more and cross over the counter rock. Shooter ends up right on top of the counter. We cut them to one point for the moment. Each team has three rocks left.

We all played well. Jason and Kurt, the front-end, were generally solid. Setting up the play for later. We would often beat the other team to the four foot, dictating the strategy for both teams. Jim and Doug were super solid. Experienced, good shooters and good rapport.

Everyone starts in the first event. Losing teams drop to second, third or fourth events. The first event is miss-and-out. You only play undefeated teams. Competition intensifies as the teams winnow. Three of four of our games were tight and challenging at least through the first two-thirds of the games. You always have to guard against the big end, the bad break.

We were the only team to finish 4-0.