- The first is great technical skill knowlege. There are a couple technical aspects to curling: how to start and stop as you mentioned, coverage of the stone, angle, where to stand, where to start, etc. We will look at posting about technical aspects in a future blog as well. Thanks for the starting point.

- You are very right. A skip will be more aware of if the stone gets caught in a faster channel or not. They may call the sweepers on or off based on this knowledge, but if the team is communicating and the sweepers are aware of the channel existing, the skip may just need to communicate that the stone is in the channel. “Take a look, its in the channel” or if the skip wants them off to allow the stone to curl out of the channel, it comes back to trusting the skip’s call of sweeping or off the sweeping. Thank you for the insight and excellent common case of arena curling.

- when you put your broom on the ice to start sweeping, make sure it is not in the line of the rock. If there was any debris on your broom it may get dislodged when your broom hits the ice, and that can kill the shot. If you start your sweeping close to your body and out of the rock’s path you can avoid this problem.

- especially in arena games, there may be slick grooves that form during the game – if a rock is travelling in one of these grooves, it will carry much further than if it is a foot to the right or left. The skip may call for weight if they think it is in one of these grooves as it is generally easier to spot from the skip’s vantage point than the sweeper’s (especially without a center line in the ice).