Ian's Angels

During the winter months, Doug and I curl on Friday nights.  It's a fun evening because we get to spend time together, get to see our friends, get to play against a different team every week and enjoy a little friendly competition.

If we win - yay!  If we lose, the other team buys me a glass of red wine.  So really, what's not to like?

Last year was my first time curling - ever.  Doug has been curling for over twenty years so he's, to put it mildly, pretty damn good.  He plays on Thursdays in a competitive league.  Friday is more of a social thing - mostly couples.  So we convinced Janice and Chris to join us and we formed a team of curling runners. Or running curlers?  We had lots of fun and learned the basics quickly enough that we were actually able to hold our own against teams that had been playing for a few years already.  It does, of course, help that our skip is talented enough to be able to clean up the mess of rocks we leave for him.

Now we're in our second year and we've recruited four more players.  Benny and Leslie play on Chris and Janice's team.  Klari and Steve play on ours.

Last Friday, we were scheduled to play against Chris and Janice's team.  It was bound to happen eventually since you play against every team at some point.  It just so happened that Klari and Steve were away so we decided to shake things up a bit.  Doug recruited Ian (from his Thursday night team).  Doug, Chris and Benny formed one team.  Janice, Leslie and I formed the other, with Ian as our skip.

Essentially, it was boys against the girls (plus Ian).

Ian's Angels we called ourselves.

The first end the ice was really slow and we could hardly get our rocks across the ice.  Our aim was off and we really didn't throw well at all. The boys handily took two points and we girls braced ourselves for what we thought was going to be a pretty painful evening.

The second end, we were down to the last rock.  Three of our rocks were in the house but only one was counting because the boys had a rock in there too.  Ian was going to throw a safe shot and try to get two points.  Janice suggested he be a little more aggressive and try to knock the boys' rock right out.  So he tried - and succeeded!  We got four points.

In the third end, we all threw some amazing shots.  Ian threw a zinger of a rock to clear the house and we ended up taking four more points.  The game was now 8:2 for the ladies.

The boys were not impressed.

We only got one point in the fourth end - making it 9:2.

They got one in the fifth - 9:3.

We got a final point in the sixth and won the game!

It was fun of course because we played so well but it was also a great night because we switched things up.  We played with different players and got to watch our significant others in action.  We don't usually get to see that because, when we're not throwing, we're busy sweeping their rocks to actually watch them play.

When I agreed to try curling last year - I figured it would be a fun way to spend an evening.

It is.

But I had no idea how much I would grow to love the game.