Curling is more interesting than we often make it out to be, and students willing to make the trek to Calumet this past Saturday were able to witness that for themselves.
On the 28th starting at 3:30pm and continuing well past sunset, Blue Key hosted a co-ed curling tournament at the Copper Country Curling Club’s meeting hall in Calumet. This was part of the club’s special activities program organized for Winter Carnival. However, it did not quite go as planned. Despite the three-point penalty in the special events standings, three teams decided to not show up without any forewarning, and a fourth team dropped out a day in advance, losing one point. Despite the lack of teams, the show needed to go on, and the bracket had to be rearranged accordingly. By pure chance, the arbitrarily assigned round one matchups put all four of the no-show teams on the same side. With only one team on the entire left side of the bracket present, extensive rearranging was required. The organizers requested the names of the absent teams to not be disclosed.
Once the remaining participating teams arrived, the tournament went on without any additional major issues. As it turns out, curling is quite difficult, and many teams struggled in the opening rounds, ending in a slew of low-scoring games. As the tournament went on, more seasoned players advanced to the finals, and many rookies showed exceptional growth with very little practice.
The finals had some close calls, but in the end the Huskies Pep Band team won by a significant margin over the ROTC team, securing eight points towards their grand total in the Blue Key special events program. As is the case with bracket-style tournaments, third place is not easily defined, so an additional match must be held between the teams eliminated in the semi-finals to determine who stands on the podium’s lowest step. However, upon being eliminated, one of these teams decided to leave the tournament, forfeiting third place to Lambda Chi Alpha.
