November 16, 2001

 mfinley.com   
"Curlers"

by Michael Finley
(c) 2001 by Michael Finley

Recent columns have been mainly about lamentation and strife. Today I would like to address the third leg of that stool, the game of curling.

I have long known of the game of curling. I first saw it in a crowded theater, as a newsreel separating features. In the newsreel, the game was played by foreigners in a foreign land -- Canada, possibly.

It's a little like bowling, and a little like shuffleboard. It is played indoors, and requires that you slide a polished 44-pound clay bowl or "stone" across 138 feet of ice, with the goal of landing it on an imprinted target called the "house." The bowl has to be on the target, landing neither before it nor going past it. It's a bitch to do this, so your teammates are allowed to escort the bowl across the ice, furiously polishing the ice with little brooms and scrubbers. 

The kids in the theater howled.

So it was with the straightest of faces that I accepted an invitation from my friend Euan this past week to a special "newbie" curling tournament at the Saint Paul Curling Club. 

"It's a rigorous event," Euan explained. "We'll start by teaching some fundamentals, then we'll break for a bite and perhaps something to fortify us for the day's events. Then we play for an hour, break for lunch and perhaps a little something to drink, then we play again, break for refreshments, then finish playing and regroup in the refectory for a farewell toast."

My kind of rigor. And a clever idea. A sport with relatively few adherents could pick up new fans by inviting them to play on teams of experienced players. I was very pleased to accept. 

I was on a team with two serious curlers in Euan, a Scots-American broadcast editor, and Jack, a bio-electronics genius from the Iron Range. The other newbie was Euan's 13 year old daughter Sara, whom I had coached in Little League years earlier.

I didn't want to make too big a fool of myself, so I practiced a bit before we met our first opponents. In curling, the shooter launches himself or herself from a set position, and glides on the ice perhaps 20 or 30 feet before releasing the stone. At the last moment, the shooter rotates the stone ever so slightly, so that when it glides to a halt it gravitates in the direction of the rotation. This is very important, because "curling" the stone allows you to place it behind another stone, for protection.

My first shot, I pushed hard, knowing it would take a mighty push to move a 44 pound object 138 feet. In this I was way wrong, as ice and the shape of the bowl actually make it very easy to push. My bowl sailed past the target and hit the wall. And I fell forward on all fours.

Euan, ever the gentleman, helped me up and assured me I had actually done quite well for a first shot. This made me feel good. What made me feel less good was that all afternoon, I kept "taking something off" my shots -- but the shots kept rambling past the target "house" and into the wall. I was too strong.

I was also very distracted. It was fun to run up and down the lane, furiously sweeping when the teammate called the "slip" called out, easing the bowl's progress. It was also fun to stop and talk with people about what just happened.  My problem was that I often found myself still chatting happily about the last shot while the current shot was underway. Result: my teammates spent the afternoon shouting my name, trying to get me to sweep.

The etiquette of the game is extreme. When you meet opponents, you must shake hands individually with them all and wish them "Good curling." And it must be genuine, as points are deducted for not meaning it. I heard tales of excellent players being dropped from the roster for being too competitive and injecting an element of animosity into the playing. Could you but love a sport that kicks out its best players for caring too much?

Some of the players we met were obviously champing at the bit. They loved the game, and they loved to win, but it was all caged fury, subordinated to the pleasantries of the handshake. Everything mattered, terribly -- but nothing more than playing in the right spirit.

I did get a bit better by day's end, and I do not attribute it to all the snacking and regaling that went on. Rather, I learned how to launch the stone without pushing it at all -- letting the ice handle the physics for me. In our last game, I actually did something to help our team. I felt lifted up, from wretchedness.

The most beautiful thing, though, was watching Euan. Euan is a big-boned man, but with a bowl in his mitt he moves with cetaceous grace, launching himself almost imperceptibly from the pit, like a Saturn rocket, releasing the stone like a second stage, which rumbles and rolls, and almost without exception curls with its final shudder onto the red heart of the "house." Bulls-eye.

It was a Celtic moment, me the larksome Irishman along for the ride, him the bombardier Scot, delivering his payload with elegance and cold craft.

How good was he? At the other end of the line a bitter Finn beheld Euan's stone locking onto its  target, and spat out, perhaps to no human listener:

"Damned Scottish curlers."

mfinley.com 
_{COPYRIGHT (c) 2001
by MICHAEL FINLEY}

Mike is available to write for your publication or organization right now. Call him at 651-644-4540. Or e-mail him.

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