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Friday, March 2, 2012

Lots of curling on tap at club

Lots of curling on tap at club
Link provided by Eric Eales

 


It will be a busy weekend at the Nanaimo Curling Club with two separate bonspiels taking over the pebbled ice.

On Saturday they are hosting their annual family bonspiel and on Sunday they welcome in some of their more physically challenged athletes for a sticks and stones bonspiel.

The family 'spiel will be filled out with 16 different teams and will pit family against family in a fun tournament, getting underway at 9: 30 a.m.

With some rinks up to three generations of curlers will be making up the foursome.
"Curling is one of the few sports where you can do that and have all the generations out there," said Nanaimo Curling Club junior coordinator Kelly Rice who is running the tournament.

Local junior curlers are encouraged to get their families out for the event every year and it has served a successful tool in growing the sport in Nanaimo.

"We've brought in moms and dads into curling, just from them spending time here watching their kids curl," said Rice, adding it is a four-end, five-draw bonspiel that adds up points at the end of the day to determine its champion.

The sticks and stones bonspiel brings out local wheel chair athletes and those who are unable to get down in the hack - they curl with a push stick with no sweepers.

Rice says this is a growing demographic for curling in Nanaimo, one they have taken great care to expand.

"Since we put in the elevator and ramp two or three years ago, we've been able to develop our wheelchair curling team and this year two of our curlers . . . we're presenting them with their B.C. jackets before they go off to nationals," she said.

Ellis Tull and Corinne Jensen recently won the B.C. championship as part of the Darryl Neighbour rink in Kamloops and they are heading off to Thunder Bay on March 18-25 in search of a Canadian crown.

The bonspiel this weekend will feature eight two-member teams playing six-end, six-rock games and will get underway at 9: 30 a.m.

Come on down and check it out if you want to see a different spin on the sport.

MUST WIN FOR SILVERTIPS

The North Island Silvertips are in a must win situation this weekend as they host the Okanagan Rockets in a two-game set at the Nanaimo Ice Centre on Saturday (5: 15 p.m.) and Sunday (10: 30 a.m.).

Thanks to their split last weekend with the Fraser Valley Bruins, the Silvertips (17-17-4) find themselves one point behind the Bruins (16-15-7) and the Valley West Hawks (18-17-3) for the final spot in the B.C. Major Midget Hockey League playoffs.

The Bruins play the Vancouver NE Chiefs (21-13-4) twice while the Hawks have two games with South Island T-Birds (3-28-7).

PIRATES EXHIBITION

The B.C. Pacific Baseball League Nanaimo Pirates have four exhibition games this weekend at Serauxman Stadium.

On Saturday they host the Victoria Mariners in a double header at noon and 2: 30 p.m. On Sunday they have a double dip with the Parksville Royals also at noon and 2: 30 p.m.

JAldrich@nanaimodailynews 250-729-4243

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Aileen’s disappointment at World Wheelchair finish


SCOTLAND wheelchair curling skip Aileen Neilson admits her team “didn’t make the big shots when it mattered” as they equalled their worst-ever finish at the World Championships.

The Strathaven star is the only female player ever to captain their country at such a prestigious event, but Aileen oversaw a disappointing championships for the Scots as they finished eighth out of the 10 teams taking part.

Russia were the eventual winners with a thumping 9-1 win over hosts South Korea in Sunday’s final.
But the tournament marked one of Scotland’s worst-ever finishes at a World Championships.
Since its inception in 2002, the squad have won medals every year except 2007 (when they finish seventh) and 2008 (when they finished eighth).

And Aileen – who skipped Scotland to world silver at last year’s event in the Czech Republic – says the arrival of new coach Tony Zummack saw the Scots try some different tactics to previous years.

But she insisted their six defeats from nine round-robin matches were down to the squad’s lack of killer instinct.

Aileen told the News: “Obviously, the whole team are disappointed with the result because we didn’t play the way we would have liked.

“One of the reasons for this is we’ve got a new coach and he has been trying some different tactics with us which, although they didn’t work last week, will make us better curlers in the long run.

“You can’t make lots of changes and expect everything to click overnight, but the fact we beat Russia in the round robin, shows what we are capable of when everything comes together.

“For us it will be about finding consistency and that will come.

“But, ultimately, when it came down to it, we didn’t make the big shots when it mattered.”
Scotland opened their campaign last Sunday with a 6-5 defeat at the hands of China, but Aileen’s team responded with an 8-6 win over Norway in the afternoon.

Monday saw the Scots come out fighting as they thumped eventual winners Russia 4-1, but that was quickly forgotten as they slumped to an 8-2 loss to Canada.

And the defeats kept on coming as a 6-4 loss to USA, a 9-2 humbling by Korea, a narrow 5-4 defeat to Slovakia and a final day 8-4 beating by Sweden sandwiched their only other win of the campaign, a 10-0 triumph over Italy.

Despite the disappointment of South Korea, Aileen still enjoyed her time in the country and is looking forward to working on next year’s competition in Sochi, Russia, where the 2014 Winter Paralympics will be held.

Aileen added: “South Korea were fantastic hosts. We had great transport and they made all the facilities very accessible for us.

“The food was a bit different, but we still managed to try some things and enjoy ourselves.

“It’s Russia next year for the World Championships so for now we go back and have a look at the videos and see what we did well and what we didn’t do so well, so we can build on this year’s experience and develop our tactical awareness over the coming months.”

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Curlers aiming for mammoth world record scalp

Feb 29 2012 by Andrew Burns, Dumfries Standard Wednesday

A TEAM of Dumfries curlers start their attempt to break a world record tomorrow.
The 10-strong group is aiming to play a match continuously for three days.
The game will start at 10am tomorrow at Dumfries Ice Bowl, with the record set to be smashed between 7pm and 8pm on Saturday.

The group is aiming to play a match for more than 57 hours and 44 seconds – the time set by members of the Coaldale Granite Club in Canada in November 2010.
And all going well, they will then be looking to power through to Sunday to reach the squad’s target of 72 hours.

Effort

Team member Graham Sloan, 30, said: “It’s going to be an almighty effort from the guys but we are all full of confidence and can’t wait to get started.

“There is a great amount of respect and friendship in the teams which will be vital in keeping the moral up once we get started.”

The others taking part are David Owen, Scott Robertson, Graham Black, James Findlay, Ruariadh Whyte, Stuart Henderson, Neil Henderson, Chris Jardine and Duncan Gracie.

They are raising money to help develop curling at the Ice Bowl and around the region.
Funds will go towards developing the junior section and general curling facilities along with upgrading the current stones, the latter providing competition standard which would allow the Ice Bowl to start bidding for national and international events.

Two rinks will square off against one another with the fifth player rotating in when someone requires a rest.

Over the three days, locals can head along and join in on the fun by taking part in fundraising challenges, coaching sessions and practice matches.

And on Saturday Olympic gold medalist and national woman's head coach Rhona Martin will be joined by men's national head coach Soren Gran and Tony Zummack from national wheelchair curling for a special coaching session.

Graham, who is curling development officer at the Ice Bowl, has urged the local public to come down and show their support.

He said: “As one of our main aims is to raise the profile of curling within Dumfries Ice Bowl we would like to invite anyone who might be interested in coming down during the four days to watch or even get the chance to have a go on the ice playing alongside the teams.

“Everyone can get involved and your support would be much appreciated so why not come down and see what’s going on?”

The team would like to thank their generous sponsors for their support.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Bronze curling whingers need to shut up

By GEORGE KARRYS, Special to QMI Agency

The peak of the curling season sees thousands of stones thrown, swept, cursed, praised and watched either in person or on television and the web. This also prompts an annual barrage of requisite whinging and complaining for which curlers and curling fans have become legendary.
Take Feb. 28, the most recent curling Super Sunday. The championship final of Canada’s Tournament of Hearts for women was a decent show and it served up an attractive result in so many ways. The home team, Alberta, was victorious over British Columbia’s Kelly Scott. The winning skip was Edmonton’s Heather Nedohin, who proved to be quite the showgirl with her waving, screaming, croaking and whooping, plus an admirable stable of facial expressions. Caught red-handed in mid-week on live television uttering a new kind of curse — “s---balls”, which she quickly changed to “sugarballs” during the subsequent uproar — the lady became a social media sensation.
We haven’t seen such a character since the days of two-time world champion skip Marilyn Bodogh-Darte. Minus the mile-high kilt, of course.

You want more? The Albertans started slowly before grinding their way into a well-oiled machine. Nedohin’s last trip to the big dance was back in 2000, whereupon she focused on supermom duties while husband Dave — and his famed Ferbey Four squad — won four men’s Brier titles, three world championships, numerous Slams and Cups and an inevitable key to the Hall of Fame. Hubby and wife have now swapped roles, pretty much, and Heather — who also won the STOH as a third in 1998 — has returned to the mountain; that 1998 squad, skipped by Cathy King (nee Borst), was the last Alberta women’s team to win it all.

Alberta skip Heather Nedohin celebrates their win over British Columbia during the gold medal game at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts curling championship in Red Deer, Alberta Feb. 26, 2012. (REUTERS/Todd Korol)
The final scored well in the ratings game, attracting just over one million eyeballs to TSN. Good thing it was a compelling match, as that morning’s bronze medal game suffered the wrath of players, pundits and armchair critics and threatened, however briefly, to overshadow the grand finale.
Introduced last year, the bronze-medal game adds a seemingly unwelcome draw to the nine-day Hearts and Brier festivals. Critics point to any number of reasons why the match is pointless and should be canned: The athletes don’t care, it’s a cash grab for extra ticket revenue, and so on.
Some of the jawing makes sense. Manitoba’s Jennifer Jones sailed into the playoffs in first place but then lost back-to-back shockers to Scott (in the Page playoff 1 v 2 game) and then to Nedohin — on an extra-end double-measurement thriller — in the Page 3 vs 4 game, thus dropping her into the bronze matchup. The question is: Should two playoff losses still warrant a crack at a podium spot, and a medal? This is, after all, a sport that took 53 years to embrace the playoff concept; prior to the Labatt sponsorship era in 1980, Brier round-robin records were used to declare the eventual champion.

Sure doesn’t sound right, and that’s a problem with the Page playoff system (gee thanks, Softball). However, the level of bronze vitriol spewed by both curling stakeholders and Average Joes quickly grew rancid.

“For players, the bronze-medal game is like farting at a funeral ... doesn’t go over very well!” tweeted 2006 Olympic champion skip Brad Gushue, who won the first Brier bronze last year in London. Other commentators despaired at how winner Jones, in their opinion, disparaged the accomplishment even as her vanquished opponent, Quebec skip Marie-France Larouche, wiped away tears of regret.

My opinion is simple: The Olympic Games have a bronze medal curling game, as do the men’s and women’s world curling championships. If that’s the way it is, there, that’s they way it should be - here. And now for some context.

The Curling News
Many things have changed in the life of the Roaring Game. In the early ’90s, players including Russ Howard — now a TSN talkie — sued the Canadian Curling Association for restraint of trade, arguing that Brier teams should be permitted to wear their own team sponsor logo(s) on their Brier uniforms, as opposed to only the event sponsor graphics. The CCA fought the application and won, but then offered an olive branch to their grumbling athletes: A new pool of “cresting” funding for all the teams, an increased per diem per player (over the nine-day event) plus additional cash for the playoff teams. These efforts to placate the athletes have been welcomed, and the grand total of cash and cash values headed to the STOH and Brier champs — which includes a pot of $40,000 from the Olympic-based Own The Podium program — now totals some $254,000.

When compared to the enormous amount of TV impressions alone, today’s curling stars are still sadly overworked — and underpaid. But things are an awful lot better than they used to be, and if you’re going to play this game at the highest levels, you should see your commitment to excellence through to the very last stone ... particularly at the events that literally created the modern-day curling athlete.

You entered playdowns, you won your provincial championship, you qualified for the bronze-medal game — so you play in that game. And if necessary, consider eating a big piece of shut the heck up.

BROOM BITS

B.C. women’s skip Scott earned kudos for steering a listing ship into the playoffs. A nasty flu bug ravaged the field, affecting multiple teams, and the Kelowna crew both lost and regained various personnel throughout the week. One of the fallen, third Sasha Carter, had to re-hydrate in a local hospital and returned to the lineup to fire back-to-back shooting percentages of 94... Team Nedohin now heads up the road to Lethbridge, Alta., for the world women’s championship, Mar. 17-24. Opponents include Scottish whiz Eve Muirhead, Swiss banker Mirjam Ott, German warhorse Andrea Schoepp and Chinese threat Bingyu Wang ... The World Curling Federation has announced a partnership with YouTube for live streaming of the world junior championships, Mar. 3-11 from Sweden. For the broadcast schedule and YouTube page, click on: bit.ly/WJ2012TV ... The Brier hits Saskatoon on the same dates as the world juniors, with wall-to-wall coverage on TSN and one night game, Mar. 7, on TSN2. The opening draw is Saturday at 2:30 p.m. ... Just like the Thursday night round-robin finale at the women’s, the Brier’s Thursday night draw features Alberta (2010 champ Kevin Koe) up against Ontario (2007 champ Glenn Howard). Amazing how that supposedly random draw schedule calculator works.

http://thecurlingnews.com/

Lockerbie Wheelchair Curling Club welcomed fellow curlers

First published on Skip Cottage Curling
Reproduced from: http://skipcottagecurling.blogspot.com/2012/02/two-events-we-missed.html

Lockerbie Wheelchair Curling Club welcomed fellow curlers from Braehead, Kinross, Stirling, South Lanarkshire and Borders for their inaugural 'Pick and Wick' Bonspiel. The brainchild of Marion Murdoch this fun competition was a winner and enjoyed by all. Click on the image above to see a larger photo of the competitors.

With the added twist of two extra stones out front in play before the start of each end, it made for interesting ends, not least the possibility of a nine-ender!

 Above L-R: Jim Sellar, Blair Murray, Keith Thorn and Gill Keith.
Photos © Jim Thomson.
The winners were Jim Sellar, Gill Keith, Keith Thorn and Blair Murray (above). The new salver for this annual competition was presented to the winners by Blair Murray. Runners-up were Ian Donaldson, Arthur Bell, Leslie Barr and Valerie Robertson

Founding member of SLWCC Passes

“Aye…that’ll be right”



That favourite phrase of our friend and curling companion Craig Taylor who has died, and will long linger in my mind. It was always accompanied by a wry smile indicating he didn’t really believe a word one was saying, but was too polite to say so.

I first met Craig on the day of my introduction to wheelchair curling at Hamiltonice-rink. We played together for over six years, and you get to know a bloke (even one as shy as Craig), reasonably well in that time. But he was a funny fellow once one got below the apparently quiet exterior. Anyone who was on his e-mail list can testify to his great sense of humour.

He was excellent at his chosen sport and that quiet smile would emerge again when he placed a stone to perfection. He was a particularly good lead player, but would quietly get on with whatever his skip instructed.

I never heard him complain about his health and he bore his disability with dignity. The last time we saw each other was at SLWCC’s tenth birthday party, and he was pleased to be asked to blow out the candles with that other founder member Jim Sellar. In his own words when I asked him if he would do it: “I’m really chuffed”.

Craig will be much missed by us all, and even more by his family. If he’s gone to “that big rink in the sky”, and he’s asked to lead for the heavenly rink, he’ll just say: “Aye…that’ll be right”, and get on with the game.

Story by; Arthur Bell SLWCC Chairman

Sudbury wheelchair curlers receive 2nd chance at National Championship March 18-25



For Immediate Release

Sudbury wheelchair curlers receive 2nd chance at National Championship March 18-25

The last minute withdrawal of New Brunswick team allows 2nd place finishers in NOCA Provincial (MEDIchair Sudbury) to fill vacancy.

Rick Prud’homme Skip and Sarah Lashbrook 3rd.

Photo courtesy of Janet Young www.janetyoungphotography.com
Sudbury, Ontario (March 01, 2012) --  “The curling gods are definitely giving us a second chance,”  says an excited  Norm Gervais who coached MEDIchair Sudbury to a close second place finish at the 2012 Northern Ontario Wheelchair Curling Championship in Sudbury earlier this year. “The winning team from New Brunswick unexpectedly withdrew from the Canadian Wheelchair Curling Championship March 18-25, 2012 at the Fort William Curling Club.  Under the rules, NOCA is allowed to fill the vacant spot with the second place team in the NOCA Provincial Championships. This is such an unexpected, yet delightful turn of events for us.”


Added Gervais, “We had to really scramble to put things together quickly and in the end we decided to combine the MEDIchair Sudbury and MEDIchair Thunder Bay teams to create one team for the Canadian Championships.

The revamped team is as follows:


Rick Prud’homme Skip (MEDIchair Sudbury)

Sarah Lashbrook 3rd (MEDIchair Sudbury)

Dennis Duclos 2nd (MEDIchair Sudbury)

Gino Sonego Lead (MEDIchair Thunder Bay)

Linda Kontunen 5th (MEDIchair Thunder Bay)

Norm Gervais Coach (MEDIchair Sudbury)


                                Sarah Lashbrook (3rd) and Dennis Duclos (2nd) celebrate successful
                                (Photo courtesy of Janet Young www.janetyoungphotography.com)

Gervais explained that the new team will have its work cut out. “The Thunder Bay curlers won’t be able to practice with the Sudbury team until we arrive in Thunder Bay for the week-long event. However, we can’t worry about that as we continue to practice and work on our accuracy, throwing weight and game strategies.”

“This recent turn of events is also very exciting for our family, friends and hopefully the city of Sudbury. We want all of them to be proud of our performance at this prestigious event.  We are also hopeful that many curling fans from Sudbury will make the trek to Thunder Bay to cheer loudly for Team Prud’homme. Second chances like this don’t come around very often and we want to make the most of our good fortune.”

About MEDIchair Sudbury ‘the home medical equipment specialists’

MEDIchair Sudbury is a locally owned franchise that is part of MEDIchair, North America’s largest and fastest growing Home Medical Equipment (HME) franchise company with stores from coast-to-coast in Canada. We carry a comprehensive line of Home Medical Equipment products including wheelchairs, scooters, lift chairs, bathroom safety products, home accessibility

solutions, and soft/disposable personal health care products such as incontinence supplies, wound care, compression, and bracing. We treat all our clients with the same respect, honour, dignity and care as we would our own family. MEDIchair Sudbury is a full service home medical equipment establishment offering a full range of home medical equipment and supplies and services for each of our retail customers and professional clients. www.sudbury.medichair.com www.medichair.com www.curling.ca/championships/wheelchair

For more information or interviews please contact:

Mr. Norm Gervais, Coach, MEDIchair Sudbury (Team Prud’homme) and Owner, MEDIchair Sudbury, (705) 525-7442 sudbury@medichair.ca

Mr. Neil Bousquet APR, Media Relations, MEDIchair (403) 256-8834 neil.bousquet@medichair.com

Monday, February 27, 2012

London Wheelchair Curling League Official Press Release


Press Release

February 27, 2012

Local Wheelchair Curlers Win Silver Medal

Four Wheelchair Curlers from the Ilderton Curling Club were awarded the Silver Medal at the Ontario ParaSport Games held last weekend in Huntsville.  The Games are held every two years and over 400 Athletes compete in a variety of sports.

Six curling teams representing Northern and Southern Ontario were entered in a round robin competition.  At the end, there was a four way tie for first place and the Ilderton team qualified for a tie-breaker game for the Gold Medal.  The Ideson team faced off against a team from Bradford which they had already beaten in the round robin competition.  Ilderton came up short in the final game however and were awarded the Silver ParaSport medals.  

Bradford won the Gold Medal and a Toronto team won bronze.

With Ideson were Mike Munro at 3rd, Tony Reynen at 2nd, Lead Shannon Wilcox and Coach Ernie Comerford.

Ideson' team has only been together one year but continued their winning ways.  In January they won the Ontario Provincial Championship and will now represent the Province in Thunder Bay, March 18 - 25 to compete for the Canadian Championship. At that event they will play against ten other teams from almost every jurisdiction in Canada.



For More Information Contact Coach Ernie Comerford 519-203-0087 or email at

erniecomerford@rogers.com

Team Lessard WINS Quebec Championships!

Based Story provided by; Ben Lessard


It was in a 25 cms snowstorm that the Quebec championship got under way at the Magog Curling Club on Saturday. The day started with a few power outage due to the storm but it was not enough to distract Lessard’s team from their goal, to get to the Nationals for a 4th year in a row.

Il était dans des 25 tempêtes de neige de CMS qui le championnat du Québec a en eu en cours après le club de bordage de Magog samedi. Le jour commencé par uns actionnent la panne due au donner l'assaut à mais il n'était pas assez pour distraire l'équipe de Lessard de leur but, pour arriver aux ressortissants pendant une 4ème année dans une rangée.

In a best of 5 between 2 teams Lessard seemed to have the advantage during each game. Team Sylvestre from Québec-City.

Dans un meilleur de 3 entre 2 équipes Lessard a semblé avoir l'avantage pendant chaque jeu. Équipe Sylvestre de Québec-Ville.

Game 1


Lessard
2
0
3
1
0
2
1
0
9
Ends
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Total
Sylverstre
0
3
0
0
1
0
0
1
5

Game 2

Lessard
2
3
2
0
1
0
2
X
10
Ends
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Total
Sylverstre
0
0
0
0
0
3
0
X
3

 Activities resumed on Sunday morning Lessard took the lead but Team Sylvestre replied with 2 pointsinsecond end.

Les activités reprises dimanche matin Lessard ont pris la tête mais l'équipe Sylvestre répondu avec l'extrémité de 2 pointsinsecond.

In the third end; Lessard’s team added another point, and stole in every end until7th end.

Team Sylvestre decided to shake hands, final score 8-2.
Dans la troisième extrémité ; L'équipe de Lessard a ajouté un autre point, et une étole dans chaque extrémité de l'extrémité until7th. L'équipe Sylvestre a décidé de se serrer la main, les points finals 8-2.

 Game 3

Lessard
3
0
1
1
1
1
1
X
8
Ends
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Total
Sylverstre
0
2
0
0
0
0
0
X
2

 Congratulation to Team Lessard Good Luck in Thunder bay!

Bonne chance à l'équipe Lessard au Nationals