The Improbable Eight Ender
I looked at Carole setting up in the hack: “don’t be short” was all I could muster – “we have backing”.
The four newbies, Carole (skip), Chuck (vice), Joahnne (second) and Doug (lead) clamoured onto sheet B for an evening of mixed curling at the vibrant Blind River Curling Club. Their combined curling experience was less than many single members but they loved the opportunity to learn and play this great social winter game.
Carole wishfully called for the proverbial guard but Doug’s rock slid into the house right onto the button to our delight. Great shot Doug! Our opponents (red), also newbies, missed their takeout, and Doug’s second guard attempt was again heavy, freezing onto his first. Both our second’s guard attempts were also long, sliding into the four foot, while our opponents failed to dislodge any of the four blue stones.
When the vice’s first guard attempt also froze in the gaggle of blue covering the four foot, Kristy, observing from the adjacent sheet yelled, “three more and you get a t-shirt”. We looked at each other quizzically, unaware of her meaning. She explained that if we got our eight rocks in the house, we would get a t-shirt from the Northern Ontario Curling Association.
The skip earnestly shouted to us: “Do you want to guard or come in and try to get a t-shirt?”. We replied in unison, ”Guard” ! As fate would replay, the vice’s second guard attempt was also long, freezing into the sea of blue like a winter pile up. Meanwhile, our opponent’s multiple takeout attempts bounced off the 240 pounds of blue granite like little red electrons.
The skip, true to her fundamentals, threw a guard for her first stone, difficult as it was to guard six rocks covering the four foot. Her rock instead nestled into the blue mass like the previous six. Kristy, now quite attentive to our game, and with an air of, ‘what don’t you get’ yelled to Carole, “if you make this – it’s an 8- Ender.”
It was then that I noticed the interest in our game from both adjacent sheets. I glanced over my shoulder at the usually quiet gallery on Monday mixed and noted a small crowd gathering, including Rick the bartender and Cathy, our administrator extraordinaire. A sense of excitement was palatable; if Carole’s final rock was in the paint, we would score an eight ender – an apparently rare feat.
Carole, in her second year as skip and apparently unbowed by the sudden pressure, was cleaning the rock carefully – it would be a wrong time for a pick, and told herself her familiar mantra “Trust the broom” as she slid gracefully out of the hack. The sweepers, aware of the possible feat and the backing, jumped on the stone immediately, sweeping desperately with anxious glances at the approaching house. The previous seven guards had been long – could the final draw come up short in a twist of irony?
Carole’s stone slid into the blue mass as if guided by some gravitational force coming to rest in the eight foot – not a red rock in sight. We hope that we respectfully thanked our opponents for the game before we jumped in each other’s arms, got our picture taken and received congratulations from club members.
Turns out there had only been 3 previous 8-Enders in the club’s history dating back to 1956 – Less than one every twenty years. That’s like one per generation. There has never been an Eight Ender in the Olympics, Tournament of Hearts or the Brier. The Canadian Curling Association estimates the probability at 1/120,000. With a shooting percentage of 13% we had defied the 0,000008 probability of achieving this feat. However, improbable, we have joined the legacy of some of our Club’s greatest skips – Glen, Marshall and Ben – and our NOCA certificate is displayed with theirs.
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