A rather touching story about the grace of sportsmanship.
I feel so blessed to live and be a part of a world where things like this happen.
It's one of the reasons I loved curling so much, which will constitute the remainder of this post. I imagine heaven to be a lot like Omaha, except the curling won't be on Sundays. (Seriously. If the Aksarben Curling club did it any other day of the week, I'd be there with Teflon on.)
One of the reasons I love it so much is because of it's sportsmanship. Teams don't play to win, although someone invariably does. A good shot is cheered and a failed shot is met with sympathy by all parties, regardless of whose shot it was. It's customary (in the case of adult leagues) for the winning team to buy a round of drinks for the losing team. Shutouts just don't happen the same way they do in other sports. As soon as it becomes clearly impossible to win, the skip* of the losing team concedes the game. There's no shame in it, and it's actually considered poor form to continue play when winning is mathematically out of reach**.
I remember one of the few bad experiences I had while curling was my senior year. I was skipping JV (which I had mixed feelings about seeing as I had played on Varsity my junior year) and we were playing Pardeeville. Their club, being a stone's throw from a lake, was always the coldest, and that night was no exception. My second's hands were purple, and I gave her my gloves to wear. Even though Varsity was still playing, P-ville's JV skip decided to call our game, mostly because we all would rather warm up (and because they were rather far behind). I opened the door to lead everyone off the ice, and the JV coach (who I never really cared for) stood in the way and told us that because Varisty was still playing, we had to play until one of us finished.
I looked over and saw the P-ville Varsity team was as likely to win their match as their JV team was to win theirs. Everyone else saw it, too. I looked at my Varsity teammates, and overheard much conversation amongst everyone about how cold and hopeless it all was. The only person who didn't want to call the game was the only person who could. 16 people on the ice, and 15 of us wanted off. I wasn't sure who I was more angry at: P-ville's skip for not calling the game and letting us off the ice, or my coach for not letting us off the ice. I'm pretty sure the other JV skip and I decided just to play as fast as we could to get our blood flowing and off the ice faster.
Sometimes I wish someone had thought to contact our local paper my senior year. That was the year my sister and I skipped rival JV teams. I remember playing on her ice one night and how much fun we had with our teams. There was always social interaction between teams on the ice, but there seemed to be more of it on the other end because there was more of it on our end. It would've made a great human interest story, although it's possible such a story would have been overshadowed by my high school boy's basketball team making it to state semi-finals that same year.
I wonder just how much my dad knew about the sport when he ushered us into it. Did he do it because it was convenient (a 5 minute walk from home to the curling rink) or did he know the values it had the potential to instill in us? Integrity (as curlers are expected to acknowledge their own fouls), comraderie, getting along with your rivals, being graceful and full of grace, developing skills of strategy and foresight, exercising reason and judgement, even applying a little bit of physics. Was it because of the community aspect? In addition to the one I grew up with, which happens to be the oldest in the nation, second only to Milwaukee, there are 3 other curling clubs in our county. The city one of his sisters lives in has a curling rink, but no high school. So it's kind of a big deal.
*the skip is like a team captain; they quite literally call the shots
**unless it's a JV game; these were often continued for the sake of practice since Portage
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