A team at the Omemee Curling Centre is celebrating the new year with one of curling’s rarest feats: an eight-ender.
Team Fox (Neil Rossen, Annie Stovell, Tom Bent, and Ron Fox) curled the eight-ender at the centre on Monday morning (December 30).
Also known as a perfect end, an eight-ender is a perfect score within a single end of curling, with one team scoring the maximum possible value of eight points — one for each rock the team put in play during the end.
Similar to perfect game in baseball, a perfect game in bowling, or a nine-dart finish in darts, an eight-ender is so rare that the Canadian Curling Association has an award to recognize any eight-ender scored in Canada.
The odds of curling an eight-ender in amateur curling are estimated at 1 in 120,000.
By comparison, the odds of a golfer hitting a hole-in-one are 1 in 12,000 and the likelihood of an amateur bowler bowling a perfect game is 1 in 11,500.
