I am fairly new to curling (started just before COVID), and had no previous experience. So after playing in a league this year I was approached by a lovely lady and asked if I could fill in for a sick curler the coming weekend in a tournament. I checked my schedule and I was pleasantly surprised and excited that I had time. She was very excited and proceeded to tell me it was in another city!! Over the next few days I was slowly filled in on this “tournament”.
Firstly it wasn’t just a different city; but a different province!
Then that afternoon I started to get a unnatural amount of emails outlining the details for this tournament.
First i found out the tournament has a costume component that my team was determined to win. We didn’t just have one costume, oh no, we had a curling costume and an evening banquet costume for our performance.
Oh and did we forget to tell you “ we will be signing a song” at the banquet. We are the Von trap family curlers and you are going to be playing the part of Maria! Lucky me. Now; I am not a terrible singer but I’ve also never been told in my life that I was good singer. Unless it was my 3 year old twins and I was singing nursery rhymes.
The next day I was invited to what I thought was a lovely lunch to discuss our travel plans. I knew I was in trouble when I arrived and they pulled out a sewing machine and started measuring me. What did I get myself into?
Then came the singing lesson, I envisioned a quick version of one of the popular songs. I started to sweat when I realized they had changed the lyrics and not only were we singing; but it was an original tune. We spent 4 hours that afternoon practicing and I still can’t get my teammates voice out of my head as she made us go over and over the lines until they were annunciated just perfect.
By gosh, I learned those lyrics; wore that costume with pride and twirled my way onto the stage in true Maria on the hilltop fashion. Low and behold we won the costume award and now every time I use my prized curling mug I think of our song.
My Favorite Curling Things
Winning the hammer.
Making a double,
Really good sweeping.
A draw to the button,
Blistering takeouts and rock’s in the rings,
These are a few of our favourite things,
When our stone picks,
When our weight sucks,
When our line is bad,
We simply pray that they screw up their shots,
And then we don’t feel so bad!
Little did I know that curling tournaments don’t often centre around the curling. It was everything else that really mattered. We ended up playing only 3 games and nobody knows who actually won because nobody really paid attention to that.
I have decided that before I join another “curling” tournament I will be asking a lot more questions. What do I have to wear; will I have to sing and dance? Will we actually be curling?