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.