A short guide for beginners.

1.    Ice sheet

Curling is played on a long-long stripe of ice that does not fit your TV-screen. It is about 40 meters long and about 6 meters wide. On the ends of this stripe there are two circles placed that look like targets, but they are called ‘House’. 

 
House consists of four circles with 12, 8, 4 and 2 (or 1) feet in diameter. They are used for convenience to define what stone is closer only. Scores does not depend on position of a single stone in the house.

Two teams push special granite rocks along one sheet, which are called ‘Rocks’. One ‘Delivery’ is made by one team, then another one by second team, then first again, then second and so on until all 16 rocks (8 for each team) are delivered on the opposite side of the lane. Afterwards teams count scores and do all the same in the opposite direction. A game consists of 10 such rounds, which are called ‘Ends’.

2.    Equipment

First of all, to play curling you need rocks (also called ‘Stones’). They are made of pure natural granite and weight about 20 kilos each! Curlers don’t have their own stones, they are normally owned by an ice-rink.
Each curler has his own’ brush’, pair of special boots with one slippery sole and one gripper sole to be able to slide with a stone during delivery.  Curlers also use stopwatches to measure stone speed also called ‘weight’.

On this picture you can see Jennifer Jones, World Champion 2008 delivering a stone. You can see her on your TV-screens this year, she plays in Canadian team. Jennifer Jones uses a brush, boot with a sliding sole, stopwatch when she delivers a stone. Try to found all mentioned items on the pic.

3.    Trajectory (stone path)

Do you know why this game is called ‘Curling’, but not ‘Stones and Brushes’ or ‘Sweep and Shout’? The thing is that during delivery curlers give a turn to a stone using its handle. That’s why a stone always curls, that’s why the game is called ‘Curling’.

Look at the picture. Because of curl, stones never go straight. To put a stone in the center of the house, called ‘tee’ as on the picture, you have to slide from the opposite side of the sheet not in the direction of tee, but onto the right edge of the white circle! And in the moment of release you have to give a proper turn to a stone, and then it will come to the center.

Why is it so complex? Why not to push it straight without rotation? In this case stone can start to rotate in any direction during its motion and trajectory will become unpredictable.

4.    Team

Curling team consists of four people. They are called ‘Lead’, ‘Second’, ‘Vice-Skip’ and ‘Skip’. 

‘Skip’ it the most important person in the game. He defines strategy, says to each player where to deliver a rock, how to curl it and how strong to push it.

When skip makes his shots, he is replaced by a vice-skip. The rest two players sweep ice when skip or vice-skip decide that it is time to.
Lead is the first player, delivers first two stones; usually they are ‘Guards’ – they don’t touch house, but stand in front of it that gives tactical advantage to a team, since they can be pushed in the house later.

5.    Why to shout

One of the funniest things for players and one of the strangest things for people that have never seen curling before – is shouting (after sweeping of course). In curling everyone shouts.

Skip shouts that it is time to sweep, sweepers shout that stone goes too fast and there is no need to sweep, then sweep shouts that even louder, curlers start to sweep more intensive but continue to shout that stone is still fast and so on. Normal communication.

Try to explain what is going on at this picture. Who is skip? Do other players sweep intensive or not? (for your information - skips name is Brad Gushue).