Posted by Britt
So we had a late afternoon game on Friday aginst some curlers from Utica, the host club. We won a tight match and advanced to play this afternoon at 5 PM. So your first question should be, why am I hearing about this win so late. Well the answer is simple...I was drunk. We all were drunk, except for David who does not drink. But I digress, we had a blast at the banquet, the prime rib was excellent and the company was fabulous. Its amazing how even the most competitive of teams will relax at thebanquet and just have a good time. It really made for a wonderful evening.
That leads me to today. We had a 5 PM draw against Rochester who had to win at 11:30 today just to get to us. The game was great, they curler fabulusly, we did not curl as well. We made a greta match of it but in the end fell short in the C division quarterfinals. I must say they were a great bunch of guys and I've always had no problem losing to a superior team, and tonight they were dead on and we faltered a bit. My shots in particular were poor, but at this point we were 2-2 as a first year entry into this tourney and we'd already had a blast.
I cannot encourage you first, second, fourth years enough to get out of Bridgeport and go on the road. While we represented Nutmeg valiantly, I cannot help but think we could have done so much more with another team or two out here and having curled with so many of you over my three years, I can honestly tell you that you guys are as good as anyone out here this weekend. Not to mention, its a tremendous party and a great time. Now I know they picked a terrible weekend to have this event, Valentine's Day is never th best time for a male only event, but next year, we here in Utica sincerely hope you'll come out with us. We have already discussed keeping this team together for at least another year and would love the company. I think we have one of the best clubs around and its time we shared the good times we have with the rest of the GNCC. Ok, I'm done and its time for more drinking, we'll see you all soon. -Britt
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
The Second Day
Posted by Britt
Ok, so I'm the only one interested in posting it seems. Anyway, we just had our second game and lost to Utica dropping us to the third event. I hit two shots in this game...yes, you heard that correctly, two shots. I was terrible in this match. And it cost us. Sean had difficulty with his weight and none of swept very well... all in all its probably the worst game we played as a team all year long.
There's just something about that second draw with this team. We did the same thing in Schenectady. That time we were able to pin it on a little too much partying the night before, but I got no one to blame this time around but ourselves. And give credit to an excellent Utica team. They played phenomenally, I can honestly say if we had played our best game, it would have been a tight match and I don't say that very often. Their third was a high school curler in his fifth year and at my absolute best, this young man could order me to get him a sammich! The skip called an excellent game, had a great working knowledge of his team and was able to make some very good shots when he needed to. There were times I thought we might steal two to climb back in (in fact had we stolen 2 in the 7th like we were set up, we would have been down one without the hammer coming home, which is not an impossible situation), and he cleared us out on a very difficult double to take more points!
Worst of all, I lost my cool out there today. I slammed my broom down on the ice once, I felt like my skip was ignoring my advice and making poor line calls, and ultimately ended up distracting our lead. not to mention a tremendous blunder on my part in the 6th, which I'll talk about in a second. I let the frustration of our back end's poor play get to me. If there was a shot there, I'd miss it outright and Sean would come up three feet short, we were terrible. He got himself together after the 3rd end & made some great shots down the stretch, but I never recovered. I did manage to not yell at him, but I caused a distraction for my team and that's the last thing I want to do. Anyone who tells you that the 5 and under bracket doesn't have competition is insane. It may not be anything to the scale that Clarissa or Jeff or Derek are undertaking, but these guys are out here busting their butts and I do, which is good that I'm getting this experience, so I can improve. This is the only way for me to learn this stuff, and ultimately if taking a beating this year makes me better prepared for my fourth year, then its absolutely worth it.
So my blunder in the 6th. Utica's skip delivered his last rock and took us out to sit on the button. His vice looked at me and said, "1 red?". I looked down the ice and did not see any rocks. I thought we had hammer but also realized I could have been mistaken, so I said, "Yeah, I guess so." and we both kicked rocks. Sean screams from the other end and sure enough, he has one rock left. Bad miss on my part. The reason I saw no other rocks was because Mike had moved it in front of the hack for Sean out of courtesy. I should have looked at the scoreboard when I had that second thought and I almost cost us big time. fortunately, their vice conceded the error had been his and we were able to reset the three stones we had moved, but I need to be more on top of that stuff.
So we're in the third event now and basically face elimination this afternoon against another Utica team. I really want to try and apply the lessons I learned this morning to the afternoon draw. Keeping myself focused and not letting the fact that I stink get to me. Keep us in your thoughts everybody.
Ok, so I'm the only one interested in posting it seems. Anyway, we just had our second game and lost to Utica dropping us to the third event. I hit two shots in this game...yes, you heard that correctly, two shots. I was terrible in this match. And it cost us. Sean had difficulty with his weight and none of swept very well... all in all its probably the worst game we played as a team all year long.
There's just something about that second draw with this team. We did the same thing in Schenectady. That time we were able to pin it on a little too much partying the night before, but I got no one to blame this time around but ourselves. And give credit to an excellent Utica team. They played phenomenally, I can honestly say if we had played our best game, it would have been a tight match and I don't say that very often. Their third was a high school curler in his fifth year and at my absolute best, this young man could order me to get him a sammich! The skip called an excellent game, had a great working knowledge of his team and was able to make some very good shots when he needed to. There were times I thought we might steal two to climb back in (in fact had we stolen 2 in the 7th like we were set up, we would have been down one without the hammer coming home, which is not an impossible situation), and he cleared us out on a very difficult double to take more points!
Worst of all, I lost my cool out there today. I slammed my broom down on the ice once, I felt like my skip was ignoring my advice and making poor line calls, and ultimately ended up distracting our lead. not to mention a tremendous blunder on my part in the 6th, which I'll talk about in a second. I let the frustration of our back end's poor play get to me. If there was a shot there, I'd miss it outright and Sean would come up three feet short, we were terrible. He got himself together after the 3rd end & made some great shots down the stretch, but I never recovered. I did manage to not yell at him, but I caused a distraction for my team and that's the last thing I want to do. Anyone who tells you that the 5 and under bracket doesn't have competition is insane. It may not be anything to the scale that Clarissa or Jeff or Derek are undertaking, but these guys are out here busting their butts and I do, which is good that I'm getting this experience, so I can improve. This is the only way for me to learn this stuff, and ultimately if taking a beating this year makes me better prepared for my fourth year, then its absolutely worth it.
So my blunder in the 6th. Utica's skip delivered his last rock and took us out to sit on the button. His vice looked at me and said, "1 red?". I looked down the ice and did not see any rocks. I thought we had hammer but also realized I could have been mistaken, so I said, "Yeah, I guess so." and we both kicked rocks. Sean screams from the other end and sure enough, he has one rock left. Bad miss on my part. The reason I saw no other rocks was because Mike had moved it in front of the hack for Sean out of courtesy. I should have looked at the scoreboard when I had that second thought and I almost cost us big time. fortunately, their vice conceded the error had been his and we were able to reset the three stones we had moved, but I need to be more on top of that stuff.
So we're in the third event now and basically face elimination this afternoon against another Utica team. I really want to try and apply the lessons I learned this morning to the afternoon draw. Keeping myself focused and not letting the fact that I stink get to me. Keep us in your thoughts everybody.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
First night in Utica
Posted by Britt
Hi, everyone. So here we are in Utica for the Dykes Memorial. Its a pretty large event with 36 teams registered. Its a men's five and under.
We were pretty disappointed that we were the only Nutmeggers that were making the trip. Some of the clubs up here have sevral teams. Schnectady, Utica and Philadelphia all have at least 5 teams here. Next year, I think we need to make a real effort to make folks aware of this event and encourage people to attend. The whole idea of this blog is to do that to some extent, and to give an easy place for people to follow our progress.
Our first draw was this afternoon at 3 PM against our sister club Norfolk. Let me start by saying, these guys were super nice and I really enjoyed playing with them. After three ends we were down 6-2 after they made what I can only call an improbable shot in the third. We had three stones all frozen in a straight line. They tried to outdraw and when their skip came heavy and straight, they decided to cut us down to two by hitting the row. Do not ask me how, I dont really understand it myself, and I was there, but the stone hit nose, somehow transferred handle peeling the front stone off to the right, which sent the second stone left and the transfer of momentum sent the third stone out the back. A triple take out. I could not believe it, it was amazing. the shooter planted and all of a sudden an opportunity for us to steal, became us surrendering three to make it 6-2! Sean brushed off the end and led us to take four with the hammer, tieing the match. From there on out, we were able to control most of the tempo and won the match 10-7
We curl tomorrow at 8:30 AM against a team from the host club Utica. I decided to call it a bit of an early night as the drive took it out of me. If I could complain about anything so far this trip it would only be the drive. Because we had a 3 PM draw and it is a solid 4 hour drive, we left this morning at 8 AM, so I'm going to bed. We have a double tomorrow and I'll try to update more then. -B
Hi, everyone. So here we are in Utica for the Dykes Memorial. Its a pretty large event with 36 teams registered. Its a men's five and under.
We were pretty disappointed that we were the only Nutmeggers that were making the trip. Some of the clubs up here have sevral teams. Schnectady, Utica and Philadelphia all have at least 5 teams here. Next year, I think we need to make a real effort to make folks aware of this event and encourage people to attend. The whole idea of this blog is to do that to some extent, and to give an easy place for people to follow our progress.
Our first draw was this afternoon at 3 PM against our sister club Norfolk. Let me start by saying, these guys were super nice and I really enjoyed playing with them. After three ends we were down 6-2 after they made what I can only call an improbable shot in the third. We had three stones all frozen in a straight line. They tried to outdraw and when their skip came heavy and straight, they decided to cut us down to two by hitting the row. Do not ask me how, I dont really understand it myself, and I was there, but the stone hit nose, somehow transferred handle peeling the front stone off to the right, which sent the second stone left and the transfer of momentum sent the third stone out the back. A triple take out. I could not believe it, it was amazing. the shooter planted and all of a sudden an opportunity for us to steal, became us surrendering three to make it 6-2! Sean brushed off the end and led us to take four with the hammer, tieing the match. From there on out, we were able to control most of the tempo and won the match 10-7
We curl tomorrow at 8:30 AM against a team from the host club Utica. I decided to call it a bit of an early night as the drive took it out of me. If I could complain about anything so far this trip it would only be the drive. Because we had a 3 PM draw and it is a solid 4 hour drive, we left this morning at 8 AM, so I'm going to bed. We have a double tomorrow and I'll try to update more then. -B
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