Greetings From Oakville, Ontario

My husband is ready to get started!

  Hello from the True North! Hot Shots Curling Camp has wrapped up and I am wiped out. But in a good way. The organizers of the camp really gave us quite an experience. I feel fortunate that we chose to attend now; when we are still fairly new to curling, so we can absorb the tips and pointers better. As they say, you can't teach an old dog new tricks!

 I think my Thursday night Skip will be happy to hear that I found good HIT weight. And I mean, real hit weight. If I practice and work hard, I can really make it consistently good. This is HUGE for me!! I honestly didn't think I had any good hits in me.

 I'm also excited to report that I found a slight toe shift of my hack foot when I'm about to take off from the hack. Not exactly sure why I do this, but I just made a mental note to control that foot better. As the day went on, I got better and better at that. My whole delivery got a bit of an over haul. I'm VERY pleased with the changes. I feel like I can find my center of balance better. I can find more power when I need it (HUGE!!) I can find my line faster. I could go on and on and on about this...

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate!

 I was greatly encouraged by a few of the classroom sessions that we had. The ones about Team Communication and Team building were eye opening to me. I've sort of taken for granted the fact that the Husband and I have always found a team when we needed it. Now that the Thursday night team is forming again for this year, we have an opportunity to really link up and work together. Really try to build something. I think if we can do that, we won't have the bad collapse like we had in the end of the season last year. The biggest thing for me personally in all of this, is rising up to the role I play in the team. If I rise to my highest potential, that will help others in the roles they play. I'm looking forward to our first practice session!

Learning about angles from Paul Balabuck

 I know it's going to sound like I'm gushing, but seriously, the weekend was great. It all came down to the AMAZING instructors. People that not only are at the top of their games, but also are excellent at instruction and teaching the proper principles of curling. Our very first instructor on Day 1 was Jill Mouzar, a former Canadian Mixed Champion, a World Junior Silver medalist and represented Nova Scotia at the 2007 Scotties.. Her analysis of my slide and delivery was very informative to me. The one thing she did with us is break up the whole delivery process into chunks. By slowing it down and concentrating on those separate parts, you really get a better sense of what you should be doing and why you aren't doing is. Another instructor, Hugh Murphy, offered up extremely valuable advice as well. You knew he never rests on his laurels, and wants to be the best he can be. Plus he wants YOU to be the best you can be. He is the ultimate competitor and just by being around him makes you excited to play. Our Team Building and Dynamics session with Earle Morris was extremely insightful. Since he has worked with some of the top teams in Canada, he has a unique view of what it takes to build a successful team. He emphasized that a lot of the things that those elite teams struggle with are the same as what we all struggle with. Your team is a relationship that takes work! No one person should be taken for granted. If you can really work together, get on the same page, and everyone contributes, then you can only get better.

 Overall, I am totally blown away by the whole weekend. The Husband and I learned a lot. Some of what we learned can be applied to our personal curling abilities, and some can be applied to our team. Obviously, I want to get better at curling. I want to improve every year. But higher up on my wish list is that our Thursday night team be the best it can be.

 I know you probably have heard this before, but Canadians are awesome! They are some of the nicest, most genuine people you will ever meet. The people at Hot Shots are truly passionate about the sport of curling. They have such enthusiasm for the future of the sport and want to share that enthusiasm with as many people as they can.

 To wrap it up - I am dying to get this season started!! I am looking forward to using what I learned at camp, but first and foremost I want to play and have fun.

Pittsburgh Rocks!!

Pictures courtesy of John Zavinski from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

                                                   My favorite pic of me. Go Steelers.    

                                                John I. and I digging in. Nice form.

    Hurry, Hurry, Hurry!!         

                                              Nick W. and I sweeping Johns rock.

Pittsburgh Curling Club      


PS: RIB pics coming soon!

Pittsburgh Friendly

 The Yinzers came to town on Saturday! And the husband and I had a blast. Rochester won, and we sent the Rooster back to the 'Burgh. One tidbit of cool information that we heard was that the Pittsburgh club is taking our clubs on compressor and condenser after everything shuts down in a few weeks. Our club is installing a new one this summer.Pittsburgh is working on building their own club (they play on arena ice at Robert Morris University now.) I can't want 'til they get up and running. Going to Pittsburgh for curling sounds awesome!! They have some really great people, and I can't wait for the next friendly.



Me channeling Jerome Bettis to move that stone.

  

The husband delivering.

Another good win for my Thursday night team last night!

 We won 9-5 in 8 ends. The funny thing is we all rushed to get the 8th end in, and we ended up blanking the 8th!!! Oh well. It was a really good game. When we had the hammer we scored a 3 point end, and a 4 point end. And we were able to steal 1 point twice in ends we did not have the hammer. As a team, we all did really well:

	3/10/2011	3/17/2011
Lead(Me)	50.0%	79.7%
2nd	31.2%	56.2%
Vice	66.7%	62.5%
Skip	75.0%	76.6%

 As you can see, I dramatically improved!! 80% is VERY good for me. I was feeling really comfortable with all my shots.There were only a couple that I flubbed a bit. And I'm happy to report that I found my guard weight again. I'm just hoping I can hold onto that muscle memory from now on. My skip reports that my in-turn and my out-turn accuracy was about the same this week. I'm not really sure what I was doing any different in respect to that, but I'll take it!! There was also some real good sweeping last night, on everyones part. I like sweeping-dominant games, makes me feel like I got a good workout in. haha.

All season long, mondays have been weird

  Monday night open league last night. Played with our travel Toronto team. One word to describe the night: Odd.

  Let me start by saying the opposing skip and vice are two VERY good players. Probably THE best guys I have ever played against, and among the top at our club. The combination of the two together makes them even better. They communicate very well with each other, and compliment each others abilities really well. Their 2nd played well too. That being said, we TIED. 7-7 in 7 ends.

  As a team we struggled a bit. Everyone missed some key shots every once in a while. It opened with 1 point for them in the 1st end, 3 points for us in the 2nd end, then 5 points for them in the 3rd end. At this point I thought: oh boy, here we go. Let the ass-whooping begin. I shrugged it off, and decided even if the whooping was coming, I was going to have as much fun as possible. Well, after that 5 point end, we scratched and clawed for every point. We weren't giving up. We got 2 in the 4th end, then held them to one in the 5th end, and then we got 1 point in each of the 6th and 7th end. TIED. Which is better than I thought I would be at that point. Our vice (throwing the last rocks) had some SA-WEET draws to get our last few points. It was definitely a fun game. And I'm just glad that we didn't get slaughtered. At the end of the 7th end there was some debate about whether to continue on with the 8th end. It was getting a little late. And it appeared everyone was on board for another end, except for one person. We were setting up for the 8th, and that person backed out at the last second, so we shook and took the tie. When I say the night was odd, it is because of how it ended. I think everyone feels iffy about ties, and since there was just one end left to play, most people were like what the heck - lets do it. Trust me, I have no dillusions about how that last end would have went. There is a VERY strong possibility we would have lost. But to not even get the chance to see how it would turn out, thats the part of a tie no one really likes. Ah well, it's a learning experience I guess.

  Personally, I played sort of OK... The first two ends, I was on track to be throwing 90%. I had some killer shots. Then I slowly came off the rails, and got lazy with some of my shots. I've noticed I may have an issue with keeping my energy level up during the whole game. How do I remedy this? I'm not sure. My whole life I've never really been a fan of playing competitive sports, and I don't know how to get into that 'mode' a successful player of any sport gets into. What's funny to me, is I've never really thought I was a competitive person. Well, curling has cured me of that. I want to compete at a higher level each time.

  Also, I am happy to report that when I mentally prepared my shots and executed with the CurlTech method in mind, I was pretty good. And when I came off the rails, it was also when I wasn't thinking properly about my shots. I'm going to have to look into to being mentally tough along with being phyically tough as well. *sigh* Again, learning experience!