Curling Makes its First Taxis Appearance!

And it wasn’t a bad showing either!

The Glasgow Taxis Cup is Scotland’s largest intervarsity event; Glasgow, Strathclyde and Caley all compete across seventeen core sports in a bid to lift the Glasgow Cup for their university. The competition is in its eleventh year now and is more competitive than ever before. The trophy has been sitting in Glasgow’s trophy cabinet for the last four years and this year they were pushing for a fifth consecutive title.

But it wasn’t going to be an easy job as both the Tech and Caley were hot on the heels of Glasgow to topple the giant – last year only a single point separated Glasgow and Strathclyde and this year was set to be just as close an affair.

Amongst the seventeen core sports this year, there were a number of exhibition sports – events run by the student bodies which, if successful, can be invited to take part next year as core events. And in this cluster of exhibition events taking place across the city was curling.

With GCU putting together a club this year, Glasgow and Strathclyde worked to push for curling’s inclusion in the Cup and, with a little persuasion, it was accepted as an exhibition sport.

Although exhibition sports don’t carry points for the overall result, that didn’t bring level of competition down at all, and, with strong rivalries between the various universities, it was going to be a good day of curling.

Due to time constraints, games were six ends in length, with each club playing the others once. The results would be put together on points, ends and then shots-up.

The first game of the day saw the Tech taking on Caley and the maroon team of Stuart Taylor, Gregor Cannon, Andy Callander and Stuart Marshall put out a very strong performance indeed, dispatching Caley by a margin of 7-1.

The Caley team of Sarah Wood, Jenni Cannon, Kathryn Spain and James Stewart needed a strong performance against the Glasgow foursome. It looked to be going Glasgow’s way for the first three ends, with two consecutive steals of two and a further steal of a single to put them 5-0 up at the half way mark.

However, after that Caley came to play, making good use of the hammer in the fourth to score their two. A series of mistakes from Glasgow in the fifth gave Caley a massive steal of three to level the scores up.

Going into the final end, Glasgow just needed the single point to win the game and they looked to be in good stead to do it. However a narrow miss from the Glasgow skip gave up the steal of one and Caley finished their day with one loss and one win.

There wasn’t any time for the Glasgow team to lick their wounds as they were straight back on against their biggest rivals for the final game of the day. Glasgow vs. Strathy.

Alasdair Schreiber and his team of Ben Fowler, Peter Dagen and Rebecca Steven would have to bring the big guns out for this game, and they certainly did. An efficient use of the hammer in the first end allowed Glasgow to open with a score of two.

Further good play from the Black and Gold team forced Strathclyde to their single in the second too. But now Taylor and his team began to turn things up resulting in a blanked third end and Glasgow finally being forced to take a single in the fourth.

The Strathy team remained on form throughout the fifth end and Glasgow skip Schreiber was left with a tricky double takeout to lie one without hammer. Catching it just too thick left it open and gave the Strathclyde team a simple shot to take a three.

Now going into the last end, Glasgow were one down, but crucially had the hammer. Lying one with his last stone to come, Schreiber elected to play the draw to the four-foot circle. He was a touch heavy, but some brilliant line calling from both the skipper and his vice, Rebecca Steven, allowed them to sweep it onto one of their own to roll onto the button to count two and win the game.

With all teams on one win and one loss it went to ends and shots-up, with Strathclyde beating Glasgow overall by six shots. That meant that Strathclyde won the event with Glasgow in second place and Caley in third.

It was a superb day of curling and great fun too. Hopefully we’ll be seeing curling as a core sport in years to come.

Glasgow's team of Peter Dagen (Second), Ben Fowler (Third), Rebcca Steven (Lead, VS), Alasdair Schreiber (Fourth, Skip)

All photo credits to Scott W. Gisbon, Strathcurl.