A few of Bob's snaps from Lockerbie.

Helen and Eve in the head.

Skip and Third picking the shot.



Helen.



Thirds, Anna and Hazel.

Final day at Lockerbie.

Our early start turned into a long day for us today.
We met Rebecca Steven in the first game.  We played well and managed to get ahead, the Steven rink came back but we held on to win. 
Three wins from three set up a game with the competition leaders, Team Muirhead. 
Before we started it looked like whoever won would progress to the final.
It was a close game, we pushed ahead slightly and were two up going into the final end but without last stone.  The end didn't quite go to plan and Eve took the two she needed to peel.  Not the outcome anyone had expected and due to the Schenkel system we were to face Eve again in the final!

So, round two!
Another close affair for most of the game.  Again we played well and had chances to go ahead.  Unfortunately we didn't get enough of a lead and a three in the 6th for Eve changed the game.  Skip's taking the blame for that one! :) We managed a one in the 7th to leave ourselves one down without in the last end.
We didn't set the end up quite right and good play from Team Muirhead gave them one and the win.
Congratulations to Eve, Anna, Vicki and Rhiann.

Hannah Fleming and Gina Aitken were the two teams due to play for third and fourth place but decided to share the prize and get home early.  
In the boys competition, Duncan Menzies rink beat Stuart Marshall in the final.  

It was another good competition for us, we have been consistent if nothing else this season. 

Up next, the finals at Aberdeen.  We're excited and hoping to put in another strong performance there. 

That's all for now, 

Team King xoxo

Lockerbie - Game 2

We were up against Anna Fowler's rink in our second game today.  The Fowler team have made the trip up from England for this weekends' competition.
It was another close encounter for us.  We traded ones and twos throughout the game and found ourselves one down going into the last end. We built the end well and managed to take a three to win.
Two wins from two, so far so good.
We have an early start tomorrow with our first game at 8:30am against Rebecca Steven.

Team King xoxo

Game 1 at Lockerbie.

We were glad that we decided to make the journey down to Lockerbie last night after waking up to snow this morning.  Thankfully all the teams made it to the ice rink on time.
We faced Team Gray in the first game today and it was a close one.  No one scored more than a two throughout and we were peels going into the last end.  The end didn't quite go to plan for us but we were left with a hit and stick for the win.  We made it and posted our first win. 
We are sitting in the middle of the table but unsure of our opposition for the next game.

More later,

Team King xoxo

Lockerbie

We are finally back on ice this weekend after what seems like a pretty long break. We are in action at Lockerbie in the Under 21's.  There are ten teams in both the girls and boys section and the competition is being run on a Schenkel system this year.
Our first game is against Lauren Gray at 12:15pm tomorrow.
As usual we will do our best to keep the blog up to date with our results.

Team King x

What's catching our eye this weekend ...

Team King are not in action ourselves this weekend but there is plenty of curling that we will be keeping our eyes on. 
The junior qualifiers got underway at Ayr this afternoon.  Along with us, Eve Muirhead, Lauren Gray and Hannah Flemming's rinks all have byes to the finals in January.  That leaves 10 girls teams competing for the remaining four finals places.  In the boys competition there are no byes which means that 17 rinks are fighting for just 8 finals places. 
The standard of curling will undoubtedly be very high and we would like to wish all of the teams good luck for the weekend!
Elsewhere, the European Championships start in Champery this weekend.  The Scottish rinks, skipped by Eve Muirhead and Hammy McMillian,  have finally made it to Switzerland and begin their campaigns tomorrow morning.
Again, Good luck to both teams!
We will be back on ice in a couple of weeks at Lockerbie.

Team King x

Aberdeen - Final Day

We only had one game today at Aberdeen as we had our bye in the last round robin game.  We faced Gillian Howard and her rink of Louise Soutar, Judith Mcfarlane and Fiona Steele.
It was a close game and could have gone either way for most of it but we were edged out in the last end.  The Howard team secured there place in the final with the win.  

As we said yesterday, the Ladies Tour has been a great competition and we have really enjoyed playing in it over the two weekends. A huge thanks has to go to Judith and all of the organisers for putting together such a fantastic event and we hope that it will continue next season. 

Congratulations to Gillian Howard's rink for winning the final and the Lockhart rink for the overall tour win. 

We have a bit of a break now, our next competition is at Lockerbie in December.

Team King x

Aberdeen day two. . .

So, we had three games today at Aberdeen, we needed to win them to keep our hopes of winning overall alive. So how did it go? ...

We played Rebecca Steven in the first game today.  We played well and managed to maintain a lead that saw us finish up winning 13-4.  Good start.
Things started to fall apart slightly in the second game.  We faced Lorna Rettig's English team and were ahead after 4 ends. It was a game of two halves and Lorna's side came back well to take the win.
Our final game today was against Anna Sloan.  We struggled to get started in this one and the Sloan team took the win after 7ends.

Not our best day, but we have enjoyed our first experience of Ladies competition and the Ladies Tour has been a great success :)

One game tomorrow, hopefully we can end the competition on a high.

Team King x

P.s. Our moment of the day ..... Watching X Factor with commentary from Tom Brewster!

Friday night at Aberdeen.

We started off our weekend against Sarah Reid's rink.  It was a close game, we were behind for most of the game but managed to bring it back to peels after seven ends.  We didn't have last stone but we stole the one needed to win with a freeze on the four-foot. 
In our second game we faced Judith Carr. This one didn't go our way, we weren't playing our best and our opposition played well to beat us 10-6. 
Three games for us tomorrow, so its off to bed. 

Team King x

Aberdeen

We are in Aberdeen this weekend for the sencond half of the Ladies Tour.
We have two games tonight, at 5pm and 8.30pm, against Sarah Reid and Judith Carr.
The results should be on the RCCC website. http://www.royalcaledoniancurlingclub.org/
Team King are enjoying a wee bit of luxury this weekend with a free stay at the Hilton ... sometimes curling is just so tough :)
We will try to keep the blog as up to date as possible.

Time to head to the Ice Rink.

Team King x

Giggles at Inverness :)

Bob was kind enough to send us this photo, at least we were still smiling after the final!

Photos from Inverness.

Just a few photos from our weekend in Inverness. Photos are from Bob Cowan's Skip cottage curling blog. 

Team chat during the final.  The answer to Bob's caption on his blog is ...She is hiding behind the 'Tree'!!

Hazel.

Helen, looking a wee bit worried!

Sarah and Eilidh working hard on Hazel's stone.

Helen and Hannah skipping.

Team King x

Final day at Inverness

Our final day at Inverness started with the quarter-finals, we played Naomi Whyte in this one.  It was another close game but we managed to secure our place in the Semi-final with a 8-6 win. 
The semi-final was a reply of our last round-robin game against Anna Sloan's rink.  We played well this game and finished up winning 6-2. 
So, we then faced Hannah Fleming in the final.  As Hazel pointed out this was our third final of the season and we were keen to swap our runners-up medals for winners ones! However, it wasn't to be today. It was a low-scoring game and we took a 3 in the 8th to force an extra end. Unfortunately,  it didn't go our way and Hannah took the one she needed to win.  Congratulations to the Fleming rink.
It was a long drive home and we couldn't help but be a wee bit disappointed but, we played well and hopefully we can continue to perform the way we have been for the rest of the season :)

It's on to Aberdeen next week for the Ladies Tour.

Team King x

Day two at Inverness.

We had three games to get through at Inverness today, the first one was against Rebecca Steven's rink. It was a close game but we fought back from behind to finish up 8-6 and make it two wins from two. 
In our next game we faced Gina Aitken, lots of 1s posted in this game, but Gina pulled ahead a lead that we couldn't come back from.  In the last round-robin game we faced Anna Sloan's rink, it was a pretty close game again, but we ended up losing 5-3.  So after the round-robin we had won 2 and lost 2, thankfully our draw shot ranking was enough to see us progress to the quarter final tomorrow morning. 

Early start again so it's off to bed for us,

Team King x

On the road to Inverness ...

It was an early start for us this morning to make it to Inverness, we packed the whole team into Helen's wee Polo and set off only to hit traffic ten minutes in ...     

Were weren't stuck long but the early start and the traffic proved too much for the younger half of the team and they were soon fast asleep ...

Sadly for the rest of us Sarah and Hazel didn't sleep for long and it was a Team King sing-a-long from then on in :)

We only had one game today which was against Lesley Young, (yes, our sub from Forfar) we started out well, taking a 5 in the first end and managed to hold on to our lead for the rest of the game to post our first win of the competition. 
We have another early start tomorrow, on ice at 8.30am, with 3games to get through it will be a busy day.

That's all for now, 
Team King x

Our season so far ...

The season started at the Greenacres Masters in September, as usual it was the first time on the ice as a team and things were a wee bit shaky! We managed to get things together and came through the round-robin unbeaten, this set-up a semi-final against Gina Aitken which we won through. Our opposition in the final were Team Gray, the current Scottish Junior Champions, the Gray rink were the better team on the day, so we had to settle for the runners-up spot.

Next, it was on to the Kinross Classic.  Hazel was unable to attend this one so we drafted in our old team-mate Carolyn Clark for a last competition before she headed for a year in Australia. We enjoyed this one with plenty of giggles along the way and the curling was alright as well. We finished up third in the High-road after bowing out to the Mansion team in the semi-finals.

Photos courtesy of Bob Cowan.  


We were back in action the next week at Forfar this time in the Ladies Tour.  Again we were a player down and thankfully local junior Lesley Young was happy to step in.  Our aim for the weekend was to win a game and see how we fared against the more experienced Ladies teams.  We seemed to find our form and found ourselves unbeaten with one round-robin game remaining.  We met Jackie Lockhart in our final game and managed to edge the win.  Unfortunately, we lost our form a bit in the final against Gail Munro and we were well beaten.  We had a great weekend and would like to say thanks to all the organisers for putting it together, especially Judith McFarlane. 

Next up is the Inverness Invitation weekend so we will keep you posted with how things go there.

Team King x

Team King are online!!!

So we have finally decided to take on Bob's challenge and set up a Team King blog.  Bob is a legend in the curling world and keeps us up to date with the goings on all over Scotland and beyond, you can find him at http://www.skipcottagecurling.blogspot.com/. We are finding the technical side of things a little tricky but hopefully our blog will improve the more that we use it :) We will try to keep it as up to date as possible with results and the general Team King news. 


Team King x