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Posts tagged Bonspiel
Curling Red River Shootout
1 year ago
by integgroll
in Curling
Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas (technically Farmers Branch). A short 45 minute drive from my home. I am very biased since this is my home club, but I love this building. It has an upstairs viewing area that has a bar attached, they just so happen to carry Shiner Boch on tap too. The ice this weekend wasn’t the best, however we were not on the rink that we are usually on, so any home rink advantage that the DFW players would have had was gone.
The Friday night before the Curling Red-River Shootout begins there is a party over on my side of town. Food, your choice of drinks (that you bring). It was at this party that we were supposed to learn who we were curling with over the weekend. And the news came, Oklahoma didn’t have enough players. I, along with a couple others, had been moved to the other side.
Saturday morning, the first set of games to be played is the regular games, worth 16 points in total. OKC wins 12 of them (DFW 4/ OKC12) After the first round the guy who has the Oklahoma Curling Club t-shirts in his car gets off the ice and I quickly convince him to sell me one so that I can be in uniform with the rest of their players. Then in the next round where I am playing they do the same right back to us OKC 4 and DFW 12, (16/16) Next there is a skills competition consisting of the following
- Draw to the button
- Hit and Roll
- Draw through a port (gigantic one)
- Raise
- Double Takeout (one right behind the other)
The first round of the skills goes alright for both teams, with it being DFW 9 to OKC 7 in the first round (25/23) and then in the next round things went in our favor a bit more with OKC scoring 10 and DFW only 6 (31/33) And now it was time for doubles, something many of us have no idea how to play, and certainly have no idea at all how the strategy is different than normal curling. However I found the doubles very fun, even if I did have to wait a whole 6 hours to play my round of them.
The doubles rounds went like this:
- DFW 4 OKC 4 (35/37)
- DFW 6 OKC 2 (41/39)
- DFW 4 OKC 4 (45/43)
- DFW 1 OKC 7 (46/50) <-my draw
So coming out of the first day of curling the OKC team was a whole 4 points ahead, however this didn’t mean too much because on Sunday there was the skins games, and that is where the *real* points are at.Sunday morning, luckily I had the later draw for skins, so I was able to sleep in a bit. So I missed about the first hour of the game on Sunday. However when I arrived it was not looking good for the Oklahoma folks. they were behind in almost every game, and not exactly happy looking. The games ended with a very biased lead to the DFW side, 41 DFW 23 OKC (87/73) OKC went from a 4 point lead to a 14 point loss in one game.
Before stepping on the ice though we made sure to clear our heads and get ready to have some fun as usual. My game goes really quickly, and we have a good game, winnind all of our skins but one. After we are done I start looking around to see how everyone else is doing and to find out if we still have a chance, our game alone almost recovered our point detriment.
After crunching a few numbers in my head, I found that we were doing alright, and we were still in this despite our massive point debt going into the round. finally one of the games ends in OKC’s favor and then the other is pretty much tied.
Finally it comes down to the last game on the ice. Everyone is watching intently waiting for the game to end so that the totals can be tallied and the winner declared. I am crunching numbers in my head once again, trying to figure out how the last two ends needed to go to determine the winner. It was all on this team at this point. The last game finally ends about 15 minutes after the other game and the total of the round is 19 DFW 46 OKC.
For those of you doing your math as you have been going on you know what the final score is already. But for those of you who have not, you will just have to finish this sentence, and the next one. The total scores of the weekend ended up being 106 Dallas/Fort Worth, which is a very sizeable score and a tough one to beat, with the slight exception of the 119 points that Oklahoma earned, making them the winners of the first Curling Red river Bonspiel!
Congratulations Oklahoma! and all of the people who were handed over to the Oklahoma team and fought for the win. I would like to say thank you to all of the people who were involved in making it happen, you guys were awesome the entire time and really made a wonderful bonspiel happen. I would also like to thank the Dr. Pepper Stars Center and its employees who without you guys it wouldn’t have been possible to have this at all, much less our curling league. I also apologize for those of you who were not invited to play, I will make sure personally that it doesn’t happen again.
And here is a picture of about half of the winners of the bonspiel! (If you aren’t in the picture, send me a picture of yourself and I will add you in)
Kansas City Barbecue Spiel
1 year ago
by integgroll
in Curling
Kansas City, Kansas. A Whole 8 hour drive from Dallas, Texas. Not as far as Ft. Wayne. This time our first Chris did all the driving, eventually as a team we might share that task, but I guess not for the past couple bonspiels.
We didn’t do so hot in this bonspiel either, we ended up going 1-2, which happens. But that is alright, Kansas City has a pretty nice setup for the off the ice time, They had beer and food free of charge for all of the curlers, which is awesome. The rink there has two arenas of ice, however only one of them has any houses painted on it. So they are a 5 sheet club, although only 4 were used. Kansas City had an issue earlier this year where there sand foundation failed on them and so the rink ended up replacing it with a concrete foundation. However this was apparently only two months ago, so their ice is still iffy. There was a single draw of 24 teams, with an assortment of people from all over the US and Canada.
Bonspiel Upsides:
- Centralized U.S. Location (Don’t have to drive forever)
- Wonderful barbecue provided and available
- Nice food the whole time
- Beer, a nice wheat one on tap too.
My Downsides:
- Wonky Ice ( mostly due to the brand new rink and awkward temperatures due to summer)
- No sponsor hotel this year
- Tiny scoreboards
I think this is a great bonspiel with wonderful people in the club, and if you don’t mind the arena ice, which i am sure will be better come next year when they have had longer than a couple weeks to get it nice and even cold and thick.
Fort Wayne Summer Spiel
1 year ago
by integgroll
in Curling
Fort Wayne, Indiana. Around 17 hours from Dallas, Texas. Which is pretty far to drive, especially if your rental car plans go arwy and someone has to drive their own car up there, Thank you once again Steve, you are a beast. Steve did both drives there and back by him self in one shot, with at most 5 stops each way.
Onward to the actual Bonspiel though, Fort Wayne’s curling club is really new, so new that they have only been open for 2 months Which is nothing against them at all, they have a lovely building, which inside they have three rinks, only two of which had ice on them while we were there. The third rink was setup as a Pepsi sponsored bounce house, which was pretty cool when it was running I just wish I had had time to go bounce around in it. On the two sheets of ice that they had running they had a total of eight sheets to play on. The spiel was also split into novice, and advanced draws, which was set in a round-robin followed by a finals format. They had a wonderful bar that crossed the entire width of the rinks so that you could watch the games from a good warm spot and get yourself some food and more importantly beer.
My team was in the advanced draw, and we had a good fun time, we picked up a whole 4 games which resulted in a 2-2 record. Not bad for curlers since march, plus a canuck who has been curling forever.
Here are the upsides of this Bonspiel:
- Advanced/Novice Draws
- Huge Draws (20 teams each, 40 total)
- Round Robin (more guaranteed games)
- Nice Bar (very attentive wait staff)
- New Bonspiel (not the same old crew showing up)
- Summer Bonspiel (Curl out of season!)
- Free Food (And it was very good)
And the Downsides:
- Flying into Fort Wayne direct is expensive
Current hotels are a mile+ away(should be solved by the next year they have a hotel across the parking lot being built)- Round Robin (more games before the finals)
- Two day bonspiel (more back to backs and multi-game days)
The bar ran out of beer on tap(the bar underestimated the curling draw I think)- Arena Ice (Gigantic Ice Resurfacer)
Sure the downsides do outnumber the upsides. However I do for sure think that this is a place to be when it is going on.
The only suggestions that I would give to the people running this bonspiel are things that they picked up on; Have more beer, Don’t pick up the hacks in the middle of the day, and get a closer hotel as the official hotel.
If you do go to this bonspiel though, which you should, be sure to “Obey the bounce guard”
Updates: Next year the closer hotel should be open! And more beer should be available! Also it seems that I may have painted this spiel in a negative light, not my intention at all, these guys did an AMAZING job, especially for only having 2 months to plan and get it all together. Next year is going to be even better!
Instructional League Week 4
2 years ago
by integgroll
in Curling
Week 4, and this week we played the Curley Temples and we had a very close game! The final score was 6-5 Twinkle Faeries. Putting us at 3-1 for the season so far, putting us at the top of the league. This is my second game skipping, and I have to say I much prefer to play third to skipping. I like to sweep, and when it comes down to it, my strategy just isn’t what it needs to be for this league.
Up in the bar tonight we found out that we didn’t make it into the Texas Open Bonspiel, it turns out that we got wait listed. Oh well looks like they didn’t save the club spots like we thought they did. But of course Krystal in her infinite wisdom decided that we should check out Dan’s Curling Bonspiel Blog, and find us a bonspiel to go compete in. And we found the Park City Curling Club who was hosting the Utah Rocky Mountain Bonspiel April 30th – May 2nd, and Krystal grabbed my phone, and called up the club right then and there to find out if they still had any slots open. Turns out they did, and she got us a slot saved and said she would send in the money the next morning. Now I can’t wait until the end of the month!
Texas Open Bonspiel 2010
2 years ago
by integgroll
in Curling
Houston, Texas. Some 4 hours to get there, 4 hours to get back. And if it wasn’t for my brilliant detour through Pasedina it would have been even longer due to the traffic. Houston has by far the worst traffic that I have ever seen. Sorry guys, but it is pretty bad, especially compared to Dallas. And that doesn’t even cover the humidity. That is for a different day.
Queue the Texas Open Bonspiel! They have a nice bar up there in Houston, lots of seating, a nice large bar area, and of course most importantly, Shiner on tap.
By the time we got there, were checked in, and back to the club DFW’s first team was already playing. Which means it was time to get to know people, and cheer on the other DFWians.
Finally it was time for the team that I rode up with to play. I do not remember how they did, but I do remember making signs to cheer them on, although that could have been the next morning, we were quite busy having a good time, and not watching all of the curling.
As we halted the early morning partying and the day broke enough for the bar to open, we actually started watching and cheering on the games at hand. We watched a certain Houston team beat most of our teams game after game, it was starting to get demoralizing. The teams that weren’t eliminated by the Houston team were eliminated by our own teams, in what we viewed as poor bracketing, which in reality was probably just as random as it should have been, we just felt we were getting the shaft as everyone does. But on the upside it did come down to a D/FW Team versus the Houston team that was ravaging the bracket. In the end the D/FW team pulled it out, although the game was a very close one, and both teams did their best.
Overall I have to say, WONDERFUL first bonspiel to go to, even if we did get wait listed, and didn’t get to play. Thank you to Ice King for coming out and taking care of the ice! I would recommend it to anyone, even if you have to deal with the Houston weather the year that you decide to go. But next year it will be in Dallas. Texas Open Bonspiel Dallas, Texas 2011 Here we come.