When I started writing this column, I swore to myself that I wouldn't fall into the same trap as some of the previous sports columnists for The Dartmouth who focused on random things jokes about 1990s sports movies and B-side analyses of pro sports. Unfortunately, I've spent the last two weeks devoting all of my free time to watching the Olympics and consequently can't think of anything else.
Of course, I could have written this column about the Dartmouth Olympians, but that's not going to work either: I missed all of their events because my television was constantly tuned to NBC's seemingly round-the-clock curling coverage.
Apparently curling has been in the Olympics since the 1998 Nagano Games, but I swear this is the first year I've heard anyone talking about it. Curling mania has never swept this campus to such a degree. It must be the way that the afternoon game seems to reach its most exciting point (the start of the seventh end) just as people are getting out of 2s.
And for a sport that seems like it should be more boring than a Little League game, I've found myself jumping out of my chair and screaming at the TV even more than I did during the USA-Canada hockey game.
Which is why I spent last weekend Googling and e-mailing every curling club within a 100-mile radius of Hanover. And, what luck, found one offering a $35 learn-to-curl clinic on Sunday, just a 90-minute drive away in Rutland, Vt.
After rallying some troops from my fraternity, six of us set off yesterday afternoon, ready to get in the hack and perfect the outside draw.
The clinic started with an hour-long lecture on the rules, history and etiquette of curling. With our combined body of curling knowledge, this felt like a waste of time, and we were itching to get out onto the ice.
The event took place on the hockey rink at Giorgetti Arena in Rutland. Before you can curl on hockey ice, you need to prepare it by "pebbling" it: spraying droplets of water all over it to form tiny bumps on the ice. It's these bumps that the sweepers are melting in front of the stone to keep it moving.
Next, they heated up the hacks the metal blocks you push off from and pushed them into the ice with two stones. Finally, we were ready to curl.
If there's one thing I can impress on you about curling, it's that it is a lot harder than it looks. My throws the whole day were so bad that I am starting to think I need to send an apology letter to Canadian women's team skip Cheryl Bernard for the unkind things I yelled at her after her last shot in the 10th end of the gold medal game.
If you weren't watching (it was Friday night, after all), she was one shot away from the gold and missed by a few inches, letting the match slip away in the curling equivalent of extra innings.
After 10 or 15 practice throws and some quick instruction in sweeping (also much harder than it looks), we finally chose sides and set up a real game.
Time constrained, we played just four rocks per side, and one of the instructors joined each team to call the game for us, but what fun it was. I was never a star athlete in high school and was unable to quickly pick up the game and join the ranks of the Beer League Legends, but several people in our group threw at least one good shot.
I'll finish this column with two recommendations: First, you should go curling, you'll have a blast. We were at Rutland Rocks Curling Club, but there are plenty of places in Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire, so get your Google on. Second, Dartmouth should find an alum who has been similarly bit by the curling bug, and hit him up to build a self-named curling arena at the College. Who knows, maybe the next Dartmouth Olympic medalist could be in curling.
