The Cornwall Curling Club, like most curling facilities, tightly schedules its draws so that curlers don’t have to curl late at night, or right after work. Because of this, we allocate 15 minutes per end of curling, or 2 hours for a normal eight-end draw. In order to ensure that this happens, we ring a buzzer 15 minutes before the end of the allotted time slot. (Note: a Board of Directors decision last year has moved the buzzer time to 10:25 from 10:15 for 8:30 draws, as they do not always get going on time due to ice preparation between draws). When the buzzer sounds, we ask you to finish up the end you are on, and then take the rocks back to the home end if necessary. In other words, you have to be in the hack throwing your first rock in your last end by 15 minutes before the end of the allotted timeslot in order to get all the ends in. In order to keep things fair, we do this on the late evening draw as well as the early draw, to ensure that everyone is treated equally and you aren’t here too late at night. Whenever possible — i.e. there is a bartender on duty — the Board of Directors has voted to use the buzzer for all draws. You may not have heard the buzzer yet this season as we normally don’t activate it during opening week, to give you some adjustment time.

Here are some tips to help you get eight ends in:

Other suggestions:

– don’t waste time on easy-to-decide shots such as single hits. Save your strategy sessions for the tough shots with many rocks in play.

— NEVER set up rocks for the other team. This is an old “courtesy” that is no longer practiced, as it can be dangerous if the rock is not where the member of the other team expects it to be, and can actually slow down the game, especially if they, for example, want to throw their rocks out of numerical order. Use your time instead to get out of the other team’s way as quickly as possible, so they can set up and deliver their rock.