What physically distant curling might look like
One person (who isn't a public health expert)'s guess
Every offseason there is that one month where I start to get the curling withdrawal shakes. Most years it is definitely not the end of April.
I’m in the camp that appreciates the season’s natural time away from the rocks. I don’t really spiel in the summer. It could be a fault line between newer curlers and veterans. But when a season is abruptly cut short — depriving us of playdowns, championships and heartfelt farewells — we’re all starting to think about next season way early.
If there is a next season.
Full disclosure, there are several problems with what I’m about to show you:
I’m not a public health expert. I’m just someone like you that has read a lot about the pandemic, filtering out trusted vs. anecdotal information, to keep our friends, family and community safe.
This is subject to change in the fall. Strike that, this will change. We know today only what we know today, and more information will come out.
I would much rather a curling body like the WCF or the USCA (or Curling Canada, for those who celebrate it) weigh in with recommendations for curling clubs. I’m sure they will, once we get closer.
So why even bother doing it if it’s wrong? Because it’s somewhere to start. I’ve personally had some conversations online and virtually regarding of the viability of a curling season. It’s not a sure thing. At the same time, it’s therapeutic to prepare for it like it will happen.
There are two main parts to this:
How will we play the game on the ice?
How are we going to socialize afterward?
The first part is going to take some mindful adjusting but will otherwise work out.
• The easy thing to do is wash your hands before you go out on the ice.
• After that, don’t shake hands. We’ve been so careful not to mess with tradition, and shaking hands before/after every game has been ingrained at all clubs for some time. But we can do away with this — temporarily or permanently. (Hopefully permanently, I could do without shaking a stranger’s hand ever again.) We can replace it with a broom tap or a simple wave, socially acknowledging every other person on the sheet with “good curling.”
• I think we’re all going to play wearing masks. It seems like there’s a Western stigma attached to them, in that mask = sick. We’re rapidly going to detach from this correlation. I’m certainly preparing for next season in a mask and it’s going to change how I skip. The reasoning started when I read this article in the LA Times (paywall article) about how 3/4 of a choir in Washington came down with COVID19 and what happened was their loud singing, going deep into the respiratory system, carried droplets further than speaking. It stands to reason that yelling is equivalent to singing, so while you’re not yelling year anyone, you’re still transmitting it. I learned to be nonverbal as a skip during loud league play and I’ll simply continue that with arm signals. Again, it’s a noticeable but easy adjustment. Get a mask today. Get a handful, you’ll need to wash them.
• Distancing — we sort of do this already? But let’s map it out. Let’s say we have four continuous sheets of ice. Each sheet is about 14 1/2 feet (or 4 1/2 meters) wide, and the width can very by a fraction of a foot/meter. This is ideal space to fit eight people on a sheet and 32 people on four sheets, assuming what public experts are saying: 6 feet, or 2 meters, apart (which is the distance from the back line to the hack, or from the pin to the edge of the house, or every tee-line section of the eight-foot circle.
There are just two main differences here:
The non-throwing team standing between the hog lines should give themselves a bit of space. (Curling clubs, when you’re painting your side lines, place X’s every six feet. We’re going to use them, and in the best-case scenario we don’t, it marks the time.)
The second sweeper. What the hell do we do with the second sweeper? If they line up with the first sweeper, their backs are to the sweeper on the other sheet. This might be okay from a droplet perspective, but offsetting them further up the sheet gives them maximum distance.
The real adjustment might be what happens when both sweepers converge on the rock. This is essentially the closest two people get, and their heads are usually right together facing each other or upstream. And I think the answer is this: only one person sweeps the rock at a time. The second person can stay back, or walk with the rock, judging/timing it. This this the one radical change to game flow, but perhaps directional sweeping entered the game at the perfect time.
• What type of equipment would you have to sanitize? Probably not the hacks or the ice or the rocks (except for the handles, and fortunately the same person is touching the same handles — just wipe/clean ‘em afterwards). Club brooms and stabilizers may need to be wiped. Door handles to the rink. You could then get really granular: ice prep equipment. Score tiles. There will be lots of surfaces you can touch. These are all levels of risk that need to be taken into the account, and why I look forward to USCA recommendations.
• After the game, wash your hands again.
Which brings us to the broomstacking. To some, the most important part.
Unlike a curling sheet, a truly unique room with distancing parameters incomparable to other situations, I fully expect the postgame socializing to follow the same protocol as your standard bar. They’ll open in some capacity, but if it’s the fall and they can serve, then we can stack.
And I think we need to leave it at that. We’ll see what the bars are doing in the fall. Personally I’m very skeptical that little will change between now and then.
I haven’t broached the subject of bonspiels, or the World Curling Tour/Slams which are even more up in the air given they add the element of travel, sometimes internationally. These guidelines would fall more within the parameters of sporting events. And I may just leave it at that to bury my pessimism into the ground and see what happens in the fall. It would not surprise me if there’s no World Curling Tour, but possibly crowdless nationals/worlds. Fingers crossed this guess is wrong, but we might just be watching webstreams of Brad Gushue beat up on his fellow St. John’s Curling Club members all season.
But USA Curling is still preparing for the season and they started unveiling their lineups for their womens teams. Cory Christensen is going back in the house with the old Sinclair team. And Nina Roth is rejoining her old team but as vice skip. She was Wally Pipped with maternity leave but Tabitha Peterson demonstrated beyond a doubt she can play the position. We’ll see where Sinclair lands.
• Curlers cooking has evolved into a contest. Perhaps all a ploy to get more curling shown on the Food Network. This week they’re doing burgers.
Something to consider:
Adjacent sheets starting on opposite ends of the sheet to reduce amount of time teams are standing near each other.
I am really not that concerned with 'distancing' while on the ice: When not sweeping, we are doing it anyway--Why? Because you never want to get too close to someone (especially someone holding a broom) when you are standing near to them on a slippery surface...you can't always anticipate which way they may turn..or walk...or move in any direction still holding that broom! This has always been my thinking--I am pretty much always super-aware of my surroundings when out there (I have fallen a couple of times--fortunately never on my head--but I know it's not a good feeling!) As for sweeping...I am thinking of the standard epidemiological equation: Infection=Exposure X Time. In other words, How Long do I have to be close enough to someone to obtain sufficient viral load from their exhaled breath? Assuming maybe at most 25 seconds close to them if we sweep the rock all the way down the sheet...sweeping at most 6 rocks (all but your own) = 150 seconds (or 2:30 per end...X 8 ends on average...=18.4 minutes. That is likely just on the borderline as to what is considered safe enough (comparable to having a face-to-face conversation with someone for 15-20 minutes); based on what we know about how much viral load may be expelled with influenza, and assuming it would be roughly the same with coronavirus. Much, of course, would also depend on the adequacy of the curling ice shed ventilation and air-exchange...