A couple weekends ago, JK, Grant, Dave and myself piled into my old Mazda and drove 1000+ kms (overnight Thursday thanks to an impending storm) to meet up with Trev to participate in Curl for Cancer at the Fredericton Curling Club.
Huge thanks to Dave who agreed to come along this year as our team photographer / videographer. We have him to thank for all the photos and videos that can be found on Flickr. On top of taking photos, he also handled all the social media for the team. The Stones of Stone twitter account was born on the trip down – feel free to check it out for a blow by blow of the weekend. By next year we’re hoping that Dave will add bagpiper to his resume. :)
As I alluded to in my plea for donations post, I had set a goal of winning the top individual fundraiser award again this year, and as a team we hoped to take home the top team fundraiser award. I started out with a personal goal of raising $1600, which was slightly more than what I brought in last year, and a team goal of $4K. Thanks to an overwhelming response to my pleas this year, I’m very happy to report that I was able to bump up my goal to $2K and still blow it out of the water! As a result, it was mission accomplished with respect to winning the top individual fundraiser award by bringing in a total of $2388.75. (That’s 3 in a row for me – every year I’ve participated.) As for the team – I couldn’t be prouder of the boys’ efforts – we raised a whopping $5777 and secured the top team fundraiser award again this year! Thank you so much to each and every person who sponsored me / us this year – I can’t thank everyone enough for that! (By the way, I’ve heard that the total amount raised by the event was $19K and based on the information I have, our team – one of 16 – actually had the top four individual fundraisers for the event and we brought in nearly 30% of the grand total for the whole event! I’m pretty damn happy about that – well done boys!)
So that covers the fundraising part of the event, but what about the curling? You may or may not recall that last year the Stones, in their debut as a team, somehow managed to win 3rd place. I’ll be the first to admit that was largely due to a lot of luck on our side. This year was not much different – we still seemed to have luck on our side in the end. The way points were awarded this year changed significantly from last year in an effort to minimize the effect of very lopsided games I guess. Believe it or not, this may have actually helped us. The way it went is that the winner of the game got 10 points (5 each for a tie) plus a point for each end they won, plus the point differential, up to a maximum of 5, which means the best you could do was 19 points for a game (10+4+5). After the first draw (for both groups), the Stones of Stone were tied for first after scoring the maximum 19 points. After the second draw (for both groups) we sat in 4th or 5th since we only managed a single point for winning one end of our second game. But as luck would have it, for the third and final draw of the day, the two teams that were ahead of us in our group ended up playing each other, and the two teams that were ahead of us in the other group also played each other! Long story short – since we scored the maximum 19 points for our last game, we actually managed to finish 3rd overall again this year! Awesome!
The final thing I need to mention is the outcome of the second annual Haggerty grudge match. This year it was Ed (Dad), Marie, Kate and Mike representing the Haggertys. Once again the game took place at the end of the day. They drew first blood and picked up a point in the first end, but we countered with five (yes 5!) in the 2nd end to take a commanding lead. I’m happy to report it was all downhill from there for the Haggertys as we picked up another point in the 3rd and then another 4 in the 4th and final end. I’m hoping they come back with a better effort next year. ;)