Curling
February 23rd, 2006 by PotatoWhy is it so hard to get a curling team together? I know it’s a challenging sport, involving strength, agility, balance, strategy, yelling, housework, and a creative way of keeping score. It’s also fairly expensive (only slightly cheaper than hockey, after you figure in the equipment). We’re pretty lucky at Western, since we can put a team on the ice for only $300 (plus a $90 “performance bond” to dissuade us from defaulting, which it looks like I’m going to lose this year), whereas at a private club it would run more like $300 each.
Yet even after I managed to get a team of 6 together, proven on the ice that they can handle the sport, and got them to agree to the cost (not that they’ve paid me yet), I can’t even get 3 people (just 2 others out of 5) to come to the games so we don’t forfeit.
Part of the problem, I think, is that I actually listened to people when they professed a genuine preference for the 5-7 timeslot instead of the late 9-11 pm one. Next year, I’m definitely going to sign up for the late league without consulting them: while they claim it’s rough since they all have to get up early in the morning and need their beauty sleep, or can’t stay up that late without falling down, and it’s also hard since the rink is on campus and many of them can just come straight from class/labs at 5, whereas at 9 they’d have gone home and then have to go back… the fact of the matter is that at 5, it’s too easy to let something else sneak into that timeslot and eat up curling time. “4 pm meeting? Sure, sounds good sir… oh crap, even if it’s only an hour long, I’ll still be late for curling! Sorry Tater, guess I’ll have to sit this match out.” “Oh, my class that usually ends at 4:30 leaving me with perfect timing to get to curling got out early, so I went home and now I don’t feel like coming back in. See you next week, I guess.”
It’s a shame, too, because curling is the only sport I’m actually half decent at… wait, does StarCraft count as a sport? What about in Korea?