Defeated at Last

Anyone who knows me knows I reached the peak of my athletic prowess in Grade 8 and it's been downhill ever since. I remember taking a fitness class and learning the routine "Three more, two more... " well enough that I could lift my head and look around in the class. In the mirrors, I spied an awkward, red-faced, odd looking woman and I thought, "Wow, that chick needs to work on her co-ordination..." before realizing the puffing weirdo, half a beat off the music, was ... me! I never went back.

I thought this year I had found my athletic stride with a team of women curlers who have played like champions all winter. We played the entire season undefeated. Until last night.

It was the championship games, and my game was ugly with a capital UG. I made, I think, two shots the entire first game. My teammates played really well and I called the right shots, but I just couldn't get my weight or line right. We lost the first of two possible games in spectacular fashion: 9-2.

In the second game, while we were behind the whole time we came very, very close to winning in the end; down one but sitting three without the hammer when it came to the last shot. That's when Debbie O'Reilly made a beautiful 'in-off' to sit one and take the Club Championship.

Now, I have been fighting a particularly nasty cold, and the way the playoffs worked this year, we hadn't played as a team for three weeks, but I think in the end, it was good old fashioned nerves that did me in. We were alone on the ice, with a packed house in the lounge above. My heart was racing right through both games, and at one point, I nearly passed out. I had been thinking about the game for days, and Oh, how I wanted my name on that trophy, especially after an undefeated season.

Amazingly, my team members say they'll stick with me next year.

Here's hoping we lose a game early in the season, so the 'undefeated' thing does become such an albatross around my neck. It would have been better to lose sooner rather than later.