I grew up in a curling club.
Before I was old enough to throw a rock, I would spend countless hours at the Granite Curling Club of West Ottawa playing with my Polly Pockets under the trophy case while my parents were out on the ice. When they were done, I would squeeze an extra chair around their table, helping myself to their snacks and hot chocolate, absorbed in my own little world and paying very little attention to the conversation going on around me.
When my older sister started to play, I was insanely jealous and I suddenly developed an all-consuming interest in the sport. With a 3-year age gap between us, I looked up to my big sister with stars in my eyes. I wanted to do everything she was doing - wear the same clothes, play the same games, have the same friends... a phase of our lives that I'm sure she found irritating to no end. I didn't understand why she didn't want her tag-along little sister hanging around and imitating her every move for every moment of every day? So weird.
Three years later, when I was finally old enough to play little rocks*, I started to learn the sport for myself. I went back to school in the fall of 1995 bragging to all of my friends about how I was going to start curling that year. Mostly, they responded with "what's curling?" and puzzled looks on their faces. Some kids laughed and made fun of me, calling curling an "old man sport". I didn't care. I wasn't going to let anything or anyone ruin my excitement. I was going to be a curler just like the rest of my family.
On Saturday mornings, all of the little rockers would line up on the backboards to receive instruction from the coaches. The lessons started out with things like how to step onto the ice without cracking your skull and progressed to actually delivering stones and playing games against each other. I was standing on the backboards one Saturday morning waiting for the lesson to start when one of the older kids came bursting through the door, leaped from the boards, launched himself off the hack, and slid effortlessly all the way to the other end of the sheet. I was awestruck. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen.
I can't actually remember very many details about learning how to curl, but I know that I was initially taught by my parents. As a child I was unwilling to accept guidance from anyone else. I sobbed my face off one night when my dad couldn't coach a tee-ball game because of some other commitment (he still made me go). My mom taught me how to curl - delivering a stone, how to run along beside a rock and sweep it at the same time, what the different turns mean, and how to read the scoreboard. She learned how to curl in high school and introduced it to my dad after they met. They were both heavily involved in the little rock program at The Granite when we were kids. My mom taught me how to play, but it was my dad who taught me how to compete.
I played almost my entire little rock/bantam/junior career as a skip. My family would (and still do) have strategy sessions around the dinner table, using salt shakers and water glasses as rocks to demonstrate and play out different scenarios. I'd say things like, "yeah, but if she misses..." which was always met with, "you can never assume that your opposition will miss." My dad taught me to read my opponent, to watch their deliveries and learn their habits. "You can learn something from every rock," he would say, "even if it was thrown poorly." He taught me how to read my own team; how to play to their strengths and avoid exposing their weaknesses. I learned the difference between offence and defense, how to play the scoreboard, and what to do when you have hammer vs. what to do when you don't. Eventually, I discovered how good it feels to win.
Julia Weagle delivers a stone at the 2016 AMJ Campbell Shorty Jenkins Classic. Photo by Stan Fong
*Little Rocks is a curling program for children aged 6-11 using small, plastic stones that weigh ~20lbs
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