A curling arena is a sheet of ice 146 feet long that is perfectly level. Players slide a curling stone, a large polished granite stone with a handle on top, toward the 12ft wide circle(the house) on the other end of the arena. There are four members of a curling team. First, there is the “skip”, the team captain, who guides the other players. The lead is the teammate who throws first. Then after the lead are the “second” and “third”. The teammates who are not throwing or guiding follow the rock after it is thrown and guide its trajectory by sweeping the ice with a curling broom under the skip’s orders.

The person throwing the stone at the time needs a special shoe with a “slider” because curlers must slide on their foot out of the hack when delivering a rock. The “hack” is a fixed rubber-lined hole that helps the curler get traction of the foot they are pushing off of.

Each team delivers eight rocks each to end the match. The last rock is called the “hammer”. The team with the rock closest to the button is awarded one point for each of its own rocks that is closer than the opponent’s closest rock. Any rock with any part of its edge outside of the house counts for no points for that team. The winner is the team with the highest score after an even number of ends-usually ten.