I recently got an e-mail proposing that my curling league may cherry pick teams from the Sunday night leagues to form a more competitive league. Surprisingly, my team was on the list of teams that would make up this new league. (I guess it's not completely implausible; we ended last year as a B level team with a pretty good 10-7 record.) However, I look at the list of other teams and see several teams that dealt us our 7 losses. Also, not naming names here, but one of the other skips on the list is a VERY accomplished curler. We have a choice on the matter so, as Lead put it: "So our choices are to play against teams that will mostly destroy us, or to be grouped with teams that our past record would indicate we are slightly to much better than... On the one hand we will finish early and get free beer, on the other hand we will finish early to on time and have to buy beer."
I'm leaning towards voting for the "realignment" though I'm a little worried that if we truly are outmatched, it may not be as fun to play. I used to play foosball with a friend of mine nearly every day for a few months (there was a table at work), but he had also played damn near every day during college and after a while, the losing got to me. Maybe I could've practiced to get better or something, but it's just foosball, and it wasn't getting to not be fun. (I've played foosball just a handful of times since.) I'd hate for this to happen with curling.
But right now, I kinda want to see if my team can hang with these other teams. Several of my team's losses came down to the last end and maybe things might break differently. What do you think? Would you choose to be in the more competitive league?
I'm leaning towards voting for the "realignment" though I'm a little worried that if we truly are outmatched, it may not be as fun to play. I used to play foosball with a friend of mine nearly every day for a few months (there was a table at work), but he had also played damn near every day during college and after a while, the losing got to me. Maybe I could've practiced to get better or something, but it's just foosball, and it wasn't getting to not be fun. (I've played foosball just a handful of times since.) I'd hate for this to happen with curling.
But right now, I kinda want to see if my team can hang with these other teams. Several of my team's losses came down to the last end and maybe things might break differently. What do you think? Would you choose to be in the more competitive league?
I would say if you want to be more competitive in general, jump up. You get better by playing better people. Rise up to that level. If you think you'll get blown out every game though, then that's not fun. But it can be fun to try to hang with the better teams.
ReplyDeleteOn the other side of it, if you think you'll blow out lesser teams, that's even less fun, because then if you feel bad, you may end up playing down to your competition. But if you want to run the table and get wins, then there's that.
That's a good point. Now, I don't really think there'd be a lot (or any) blowouts. I kinda think that my team is a B level team only as an average. There are weeks where all four of us are making shots (and I'm actually making good strategy decisions) and other weeks where we can't figure out the ice at all. But I think I'll go with the higher competition level; I at least want to see what happens.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't fun to lose 22 - 0 at our first match in the Vacaville Bonspiel, but we learned some pretty good lessons. Take a curling slide, get beaten, but try to pick up some new tricks every time. Who knows? You might actually do better than you thought.
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