Curling, a strategic sport in which the simple things can affect the whole game. Curling is a sport that is played on a sheet of ice. Teams take turns sliding a stone down the ice, while their teammates sweep the ice to make the stone go quicker. There are three sweepers, two sweep the ice from the very start, and a third waits at the house commanding the two sweepers while waiting for the perfect moment to join the sweeping. While Curling is mostly the same wherever you play it, the playing conditions can vary depending on what surface you play on. I learned that as I was practicing my Curling skills while playing on a basketball court. When I was actually on the ice, I was able to sweep better, and slide a lot better and further. This is shown after my at school experience vs. Curling on the ice, or the same things at school and the rink vs. the different things from school and the rink, or simply my expectations vs. reality.
There were similarities between curling at school vs curling at Ardsley, but there were also differences. Firstly, the stones were a lot different. At school, it was harder to be accurate with the stones as they were so light. This changed the shot as if your release was not straight the stone would slide left or right. Differently, at Ardsley Curling Club, since the stones were so much heavier, even if you had a bad release the stone would not curl too much unless you had the handle at 10:00 or 2:00 o’clock. When I picked up a stone, I thought, Oh wow, imagine if this fell on my toes, and then my friend dropped the stone on the ice and cracked it. Something that stayed the same was sweeping. In school, sweeping would make the stone go much further, but since the gym was so small width wise, no team really used sweeping. On the ice though, Sweeping still made a huge difference and kept the stone on path. Another similarity is that sweeping was still a big exercise. Since you have to constantly sweep, you can constantly see the tiredness in everyone. When I was sweeping, I always thought Just a few more feet! But that few feet felt like a whole match!
There were a lot of expectations for the trip and they were met with hefty realities. Firstly, we thought that the rink would be huge. We thought this because our teacher kept telling us about the size of the rink. When we went though, not only was the rink small, but the houses were three, or two times bigger than the ones at school. Another big shock was the effectiveness of sweeping. At first, I did not think sweeping would change anything. Actually, not only did it help our stones go further, it helped keep it straight. That was amazing as some of our shots had bad release so it started Curling. Another surprising thing was the weight of the stones. When we were practicing, the stones might’ve scratched five pounds. But on the ice rink, the stones were much heavier. Obviously a difference of thirty seven pounds is big, but it was not too much weight. That was my expectation vs. differences
The Curling trip was different from many things I had learned and expected. This is shown when I was practicing versus the actual experiences, or my expectations versus the reality. While Curling does not rowse any amusement for most, this trip was so much fun. If you do have free time I would highly recommend going curling as it is a fun, welcoming sport for all.