After over 40 years of curling I have a lot of interesting and comical stories to tell. Like the story of Eugene at our curling club who would take several minutes to figure out a shot, and then go into the hack and miss the broom by several feet , but some how manage to wick off a rock in the front and end up on the button. He then would exclaim to all ” Just like I planned it”. He did that so often that to this day when a shot like that happens in our club we call it “A Eugene shot”. Or the time 2 players on my team got into a donnybrook with each other at a bonspiel over a burnt rock. Alcohol was involved. (Enough said. That is a story for another time). But the most memorable was the time our team won the first prize (a fly-in fishing trip to Northern Quebec) in the Temiskaming Sportsman spiel . That game is etched into my mind and I don’t think I will ever forget it.
I was a bit of a reluctant skip on the team. Even though I normally played lead, I had the most experience curling on our team and therefore was voted into the skip position. We were curling well though and we found ourselves playing in the semi-finals of the A event on Sunday morning. However, during the semi-final game things seemed to fall apart for me. We found ourselves down 6-0 after 4 ends, mainly due to fact that I had not made any of my shots. I was struggling and the rest of my team was going down with me. The Vice asked if we should just pack it in and head to bar, but I decided to play one more end and see if we could get our two points. Just so we would not be skunked. So we played the 5th end and I managed to make both my shots and we scored 2 points. Let’s play one more end I said since we have to take the rocks back any way. We managed to steal one in the 6th. One more end was the decision and we manged to steal another point. My team was making all their shots and I was just putting down guards or drawing in. Now we are in the 8th and final end with the score 6-4. We needed to steal two for a tie. The rest my team was flawless in shot making and I seemed to have my weight down at last, so we said lets play the last end. It came down to my last two shots. We had one rock in the 4 foot and one rock in the outside 8 foot at the tee line. The other team had no rocks in the house. There were two centre line guards guarding the rock in the 4 foot so I decided to draw another one in with my first and put it in the top 8 foot, but not completely buried behind the guards They came down with a hack weight take out and moved my rock to the back 12 foot and rolled out into the open near the back of the rings. With my last shot I took out their rock at the back of the rings and rolled out. We still had 3 rocks in the rings. There was no chance for a double, but all they would have to do would be to hit and stick on our stone in the 8 foot and it would be game over. Even if they rolled out they would still have a tie and the hammer in the extra end. The spot where the rock in the 8 foot was had proved earlier in the game to be in tricky spot since there was a bit of run there, so they decided to draw up to rock in the 4 foot and use it for backing. They would be giving us one more point, but would still win the game. They threw their last rock and it over curled on them and hit the front guard and did not make it to into the rings at all. We stole 3 pts and won the game. Our team was pumped. In the next game that afternoon the other team never stood a chance. Our confidence level was at its peak and we were making all our shots. We won the fly-in fishing trip.
So from now on when we are down early in the first half of the game and thinking of quitting, I always say let’s just play one more end, and see what happens.
