Originally, the description of my blog was supposed to be “UBC, Kin, and curling: all in a funsized package”. However, I haven’t gotten to curl very much this school year—I’d been out on the ice for a grand total of 2 times before tonight.
So when my old high school teammate messaged me about the On The Button Bonspiel held by UBC REC, I jumped at the chance. Of course, we registered at the last minute, and only managed to get 3 girls on our team, including me.
The bonspiel (essentially, a tournament) was held at the Richmond Curling Centre. Normally, when you curl there isn’t loud music blasting from a stereo, because the extra noise makes it harder for the players to communicate. For example, imagine that I’m at one end of the ice sheet and my friend Brenna is at the other end.
Me: What shot do yeh think we should make?
Brenna: *waggles arms and shouts something I can’t understand*
Me: I don’t comprehend. WHAT?
Brenna: *makes motion again*
Me: I can’t hear you. WHAT?!
In the case of the UBC REC event, however, the background dance music worked because there were a lot of new-to-curling players on the ice, and so vital, game-changing communication was kept to a minimum. Actually, I think the music brought a lot of fun to the game.
We played 3 matches of 2 ends, which took about two hours. It wasn’t super competitive, so I didn’t stress out much about winning although I’m kind of disappointed with my performance. No matter whether we won or lost, it was fun!
One complaint I have, though, is that the ice was super dirty. If you don’t know curling, clean ice is super important. My suspicion is that not all of the new-to-curling players were wearing shoes with clean soles. Maybe next year they will provide fly paper to peel away the dirt with?
To conclude, I think that this is one of the best ways to get into curling 😀 I highly encourage everyone reading this to try it out next year!
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