Communication is pivotal in curling. Competitors have to think several shots ahead, and strategy discussions often take place among people 150 feet apart at opposite ends of the rink—all while on the clock. (Teams are limited to 38 minutes of “thinking time” per game.)
So it helps that two of the members of Team Peterson—which has a good chance of earning the U.S.’s first Olympic medal in the women’s competition—speak their own language. Tabitha Peterson, the 32-year-old skip, and her younger sister, Tara, are fluent in something called Iber, which was invented by their mother, Gaye, and her sisters. It involves adding ib after the first consonant sound of each syllable (or just adding ib if there’s no consonant). The end result—Tabitha becomes Ti-bab-ib-ith-ib-ba—sounds like Pig Latin spoken by someone who just got a novocaine shot from the dentist.
Their teammates—Becca Hamilton, Nina Roth and alternate Aileen Geving—have picked up a little bit of Iber, but they’ve yet to use it on the ice, even if it would be a wonderful way of disguising the team’s plans. “We maybe should consider that,” says Tara, 30. “When we’re playing the Russians and when we’re playing the Swedes, we don’t know what they’re saying. We don’t speak those languages. But everybody speaks a little English.”
