Miscellaneous Monday - Did you ever stop to think about it?

Jimmy Seddon

Happy Monday Everyone!

Over the weekend I was called upon by a good friend to help teach/coach a bunch of new curlers the basics of the game.

For anyone not familiar with curling it's that weird sport on ice where one guy throws a rock down the ice while the other people sweep the ice in front of it.

While I was explaining some of the basics to these new curlers, I got some confused faces about some of the terms I was using.  Things that are second nature to me know, but this really got me thinking about some of the terminology that is used in curling and how it came to exist in the first place.

One of the most common things you will here someone talk about is the "Hog-Line".  This is a line marked in the ice about 2/3 of the way down from where the person throwing the rock starts.  You must get your rock to cross this line in order to be considered in play.  The origin of this is that in Scotland young lambs that were the runt of the litter and weren't expected to survive were known as "hogs".  This translated into curling as rocks that were not expected to make it into play.

It has also become second nature for people new to curling to shout "Hurry Hard!" at the top of their lungs, but I can say that this is more of a media pushed activity than actual reality.  Yes, you are yelling as loudly as you can, but that is so that you can ensure your team can hear you above the other games that are happening right beside you.

The term "Hurry Hard!" was designed to indicate when and how intensely the players sweeping the rock should act.  In my experience this specific term is used much less frequently, most teams opt to use terms that are shorter to shout repeated and are clear enough not to be confused with each other.  Which is why you will rarely ever hear someone say "GO!" or "NO!".

I put this out there for curling specifically, but as I got thinking about it there are plenty of other sports that have similar origin stories and terminology we have come to accept as a part of each game but are really weird if you don't understand where it came from.

Enjoy your week everyone and keep it weird!

Jodi LeBlanc

Love this post @Jimmy Seddon - I am in Florida visiting my parents and my Mom is such a huge curling fan that she watches it every chance she gets. I curled from grade 7 to 10, and loved it, but didn't know the history of those terms until today (thanks to you).  I am left handed so I was taught by Johnny Squarebriggs who was also a left handed curler. I was on a team with three other boys, and we won every bonspiel we entered, I played 3rd stone (mate), and we had such a great friendship and team dynamic. However when we were in grade 10 a few people complained of our success, and we were eventually told we would need to move to a mix team (2 girls, 2 boys) or switch to an all boys, or all girls team or be disqualified. We were crushed, but I eventually decided to bow out since AJ, Jody and Jamie were friends since they were 6 years old (oh and Jody and Jamie were twins).  It left a bad taste in our mouths and even at grade 10 we couldn't figure out why our gender was an issue when it had nothing to do with the sport. Since then I curled with work social events for fun, but ended up moving on to other winter sports after that experience.