Curling

The annual Utah Winter Games were held a couple of weeks ago.  While other sports have competitions cancelled, the curling event has survived.  Our league team was invited to play.

Our lead (first player) could not join us since she had the Egyptian flu (sick for 6 weeks each morning, then 9 months later becomes a mummy).  Since the 3 of us were used to this arrangement, we played without our missing mommy-to-be. 

Rules were that we played 3 games, each game to be 2 ends (we typically play 5 or 6 ends each night during league play)

First game resulted in a tie and a shootoff (each teams skip curls one stone and the one that ends up closest to the center of the house wins.  We are allowed to sweep our own stone but not the competition).  We won by a couple of feet.  

Next game was 8-0.  We felt bad to beat them by that much, but that's what happened.

Third game was won as well.  

That put us into the finals.  Based on the fact we were undefeated up to that point and had scored more points against our opponents, we were seeded #1.  Our nemesis team, the "Teenage Mutant Ninga Turtles" (who we had NEVER beaten before) would be our opponent.  They won the first end by 2 points.  It was looking very dismal.  They placed one stone on the button while we had 2 stones guarding them.  They placed high guards to prevent us getting to our stones but through a combination of bad shots from them and clearing out some of the guards.  Then with our last stone we were able to hit one of our guarding stones to clear out the opponent stone and score 3, winning the end, game, match and...

...gold medals for the team.