Watching new curlers

I arrived at the curling club early yesterday, and there were a bunch of new curlers on the ice. Let me tell you, man, they were awful.

Most shots were either too heavy and went beyond the scoring area, or house, or were too light and not anywhere close to scoring. They were lining up to sweep around two-thirds of the way down the ice, so that very often they would have to slide back to the stone to sweep it, overshoot the rock and then have to slide forward towards it. They threw wrong handles, they gave wrong signals, they swept too much on many rocks and too little on others.

But despite all that, I admired their enthusiasm. They were laughing and pointing and teasing each other. They were going, oh, so close, on the almost made shots then were absolutely giddy when someone, anyone, did make a shot. You might have thought they'd won a million bucks. They were having a great time.

I think that might be the best way to discover curling. Give the new players some basic instruction, then get out of the way and let them have fun with it. That might just be how you get newbies excited about playing more and learning the details along the way.

I was told that this same group would be coming out at the same time for the next six weeks. I enjoyed myself so much just watching them that I may just go early again next week.