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Thursday, January 23, 2014

Eight-time champ prepared to defend at provincials



  




 
If Frank Labounty had his way, he'd be tossing stones right now at provincials. Instead, he'll have to wait until Friday when the B.C. Wheelchair Curling championship gets underway at the Coquitlam Curling Club.

The eight-time B.C. champ, who plays out of the Prince George Golf and Curling Club, is making his 10th appearance at provincials.

Labounty, 47, is the lone Prince George curler at provincials and will play third on a team that includes skip Darryl Neighbour, second Vince Miele and lead Alison Duddy from Quesnel. The rink has only practised together twice, but Labounty credits playing five days a week in three leagues - seniors, Friday night mixed, and doubles - at the PGGCC where he plays skip, for preparing for next weekend.

"The calibre of league play keeps me sharp against older players who've played for 30 to 40 years," he said. "It gives you a lot of experience, and we always play better when the pressure is on." His rink, which only added one new player to the mix, is one of three competing at B.C.'s. Its goal is to win provincials and advance to nationals in Boucherville, Quebec in late April. The team won silver at the 2013 nationals.

Labounty's teams takes to the ice Saturday at 9 a.m. against Gerry Austgarden and then at 2 p.m. against Bob MacDonald. The top-two teams will advance to the playoffs with the final slated for 10:30 a.m. Sunday.

"The level of play at provincials has improved over the last few years," Labounty said. "The weight of the shot has to be on and calling the right ice has to be perfect. We play the same rules [as able-bodied curlers] and the strategy is the same."

Labounty only took up the game 10 years ago after he was hurt in a logging accident in 1998. Curling has given the father of three his life back.

"It's given me freedom and independence," he said. "The social part is big, but once you get to a certain level, and make some nice shots, you become more competitive," he said.

Clarke Mairs LLP sponsors Northern Ice wheelchair curling team

By

      
Clarke Mairs LLP, based in Newcastle, is now sponsoring the Northern Ice wheelchair curling team, who have set their sights on representing England at the sport


Emma Pringle (second right) of Clarke Mairs LLP with the Northern Ice Wheelchair Curling Team
Emma Pringle (second right) of Clarke Mairs LLP with the Northern Ice Wheelchair Curling Team


A North East law firm has proved a shot in the arm for a wheelchair curling team in a bid to help them compete internationally.


Clarke Mairs LLP, based in Newcastle, is now sponsoring the Northern Ice wheelchair curling team, who have set their sights on representing England at the sport.


The team is the only wheelchair curling team south of the border. They have had discussions with the English Curling Association as they would like to represent England in next year’s international curling competition in Norway.


Other companies to back the team include Whitley Bay-based Northridge Healthcare, Dunston-based Easibathe, Byker-based Apex Blinds and Berwick Mobility.


If team members are able to represent England, it will open the door for them to be eligible to play for Great Britain in the Paralympics.


The team has ten members who live in Newcastle, Northumberland and Cumbria. Members range from 18 to 51, and most have spinal injuries and are paralysed from the waist down.
Stewart Pimblett of Seghill formed the team in 2010 after watching coverage of the Winter Paralympics on TV.


Pimblett and his friends, who already compete in a wheelchair basketball team, decided to take up curling but realised there were no local opportunities, so they set up Northern Ice. They have been training at Borders Wheelchair Curling Club in Kelso ever since.


Team members make the three-hour journey to Kelso in the Scottish Borders to train for two hours a week, before returning in the evening.


Curling teams usually train up to 20 hours a week, so Northern Ice are looking for ways to be able to train closer to home, and to take on specialised coaching staff.


Pimblett said: “We’re very grateful to Clarke Mairs for becoming our newest sponsor. Their contribution will make a huge difference to us in terms of buying more clothing, equipment, covering training costs and funding entry into competitions.


“Wheelchair curling is both interesting to watch and exciting to play, and in creating Northern Ice we’ve introduced another Paralympic sport for disabled individuals in the area to try their hand at.
Tim Clarke, partner at Clarke Mairs, said: “We’re delighted to sponsor Northern Ice and we’ve been very impressed by their dedication and commitment to their sport. We’re looking forward to following their journey as they set their sights on becoming the official England wheelchair curling team.”

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

China: 11 facts on the Sochi 2014 Paralympics



   
The summer Games powerhouse has yet to make the podium at a Winter Paralympics, but with strong performances in wheelchair curling, China will hope to make its mark in Sochi.


China won bronze by defeating Slovakia at the 2012 Wheelchair Curling World Championships in Chuncheon, Korea 
   China won bronze by defeating Slovakia at the 2012 Wheelchair Curling World Championships in Chuncheon, Korea © • KOSAD/Young Bok Kim 
    

- China have yet to win a medal at the Paralympic Winter Games.


- China have participated in the last three Winter Paralympics after making their debut at the Salt Lake City 2002 Games.


- In 2002, China sent four athletes to the Games: one in alpine skiing and three in cross-country skiing.


- At both the Torino 2006 and Vancouver 2010 Paralympics seven Chinese athletes competed in cross-country skiing.


- The best result by a competitor from China in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Paralympics was a fifth place finish by Peng Yuanyuan in the women's 5km cross-country classic style standing.


- China have won two bronze medals at the last two World Wheelchair Curling Championships in Chuncheon City (2012) and Sochi (2013).


- Wang Haitao, Liu Wei, He Jun, Xu Guangqin and Zhang Qiang were part of both the 2012 and 2013 bronze medal winning curling team at the World Championships.


- China have won 783 medals in the Summer Paralympics (326 gold, 259 silver, 198 bronze), which puts them in all-time sixth place in the Summer Paralympic medal table behind the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and France.


- At the London 2012 Summer Paralympics, China pocketed 95 gold medals, 71 silver medals and 65 bronze medals, making it by far the most successful NPC in the competition. Russia came second on 36 gold medals.


- China also led the medal table in Athens in 2004 and in their home Games in Beijing in 2008.


- China's most successful Paralympic athlete is swimmer Du Jian Ping, who has won nine gold medals, four silver medals and two bronze medals between 2004 and 2012.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Day 2 of the British Open





Day 2 of the British Open is now finished.


Team Great Britain won both games today to sit at 4-0 and play Team Russia (3-1) in the final pool game tomorrow morning.


The winner will play in the gold medal game and the loser will play for bronze.


The other pool sees Team Finland play Team Rosemary Lenton with the winner advancing to the gold medal match. Great preparation for Sochi!




















British Open













Team Great Britain got off to a good start with two wins at the British Open on Sunday.


 The team defeated both Wales and England on day one and play Team Seamus McArdle and Team Alex Harvey today. Team Scotland finished the day 1-1. Both teams have 2 games today at 10 am and 230 pm.



British Open 2013/14 - Draw and Match Schedule 

Sunday 19th Jan 

  Sheet 

17.00     A  Scotland  v Hopkins       B  Webster v Lenton      C  McKenzie v Finland      D  Harvey  v Northern Exiles      E  Russia v Pimblett      F  GB  v Wales 

20.15     A  Russia v Northern Exiles      B  GB  v Pimblett         C  Wales v Harvey      D  Hopkins v Finland      E  Scotland v Lenton      F   Webster v McKenzie 

Monday 20th Jan 

10.00     A  Finland v Webster      B  McKenzie v Scotland      C  Lenton v Hopkins      D  Pimblett v Wales      E  N Exiles v  GB       F  Harvey v Russia  

2.30     A  GB  v Harvey      B  Wales v  Russia       C  Pimblett v N Exiles      D  Lenton  v McKenzie      E  Hopkins v Webster       F  Scotland v Finland 

Tuesday 21st Jan 

  Sheet 

10.00     A  McKenzie  v  Hopkins      B    Finland v  Lenton      C  Webster  v  Scotland      D  Russia  v  GB      E   Harvey  v  Pimblett      F   N Exiles v  Wales 

   2.30     A  5th   Section A v 5th Section B      B  3rd  Section A v 3rd Section B      C  1st   Section A  v  1st Section B      D  2nd  Section A v 2nd Section B      E  4th   Section A v 4th Section B      F  6th   Section A v 6th Section B

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Schieber helping Team USA prepare for Paralympic Games

 Wiscnews.com


January 15, 2014 5:40 pm  • 

When Schieber starts listing off all the countries he’s visited for international curling competitions, he sounds a little like Johnny Cash singing about all the place’s he’s been.


“I have been to Canada multiple times, Norway, Sweden, Scotland, England, Germany, Denmark, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Russia, Korea and China,” Schieber said in a recent interview.
Is that it?


“Oh, and Japan,” Schieber added, realizing he almost forgot one. “The passport is close to being filled.”


Most of Schieber’s travels around the globe have come since he joined the U.S. Wheelchair Curling Team as an assistant coach in 2009. It’s a job that will have Schieber making the trip from his Portage home to Sochi, Russia in March, as he and head coach Steve Brown, of Madison, try to help Team USA win what has been an elusive Paralympic curling medal.


Schieber joined the team in 2009, as it was preparing for the 2010 Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver. As the head coach, Brown needed somebody to lend a hand when his other curling duties made him unavailable to coach the team, and he decided to ask Schieber, based on his experiences working with him in the past while coaching one of Rusty’s daughters in junior curling.


Coaching the U.S. Wheelchair Curling athletes is a big job, considering most of the athletes know almost nothing about the sport when they join the program.


“When our players come in to us, we have to teach them everything they need to know about curling, from the strategy of the game, all the way through the execution of the shot,” Schieber said. “I would say it’s common for them to spend probably two or three years practicing through our various camps, until they get themselves to a level where they can actually think about making the team.


“Then once, they get on the team, they get some Olympic money and we make them the best they can possibly be.”


One example of an athlete that Brown and Schieber have helped teach is Penny Greely, of Green Bay, who won a a bronze medal in sitting volleyball at the 2004 Summer Paralympic Games in Athens. Then, in 2010, Greely was recruited to the U.S. curling program, and is now the team’s lead.
Getting the chance to help athletes like Greely, not only learn the sport of curling, but play it at a high level, is what makes Schieber’s coaching job enjoyable.


“To watch her go from not knowing anything about curling, and bringing her in after Vancouver in 2009 and see her compete in her second international competition, her first Paralympic Winter Games, it is pretty impressive,” Schieber said. “So you get to see the growth, you get to see the development, you get to see the plan that you instituted to make those players better, work. It’s just phenomenal.”


When Schieber heads to Sochi in March, it will actually be his second trip to the city. Last year, he traveled there with the U.S. Wheelchair Team for the 2013 World Championships. The event served as a bit of a tune-up for the upcoming Winter Olympic Games, which begin in three weeks.


What was Schieber’s impression of Sochi?


Think palm trees.


Huh?


“Sochi is going to be unlike any Winter Olympic venue that they’ve ever had. When you picture Winter Olympics, you’re picturing snow, you’re picturing pine trees, you’re picturing mountains,” Schieber said. “Sochi is a Mediterranean resort village. It’s palm trees. It’s green. It’s on the shores of the Black Sea.


“As soon as people see those palm trees on the Olympics, they’re going to ask ‘what Olympics is this, the summer or the winter?’”


Being involved with the U.S. Wheelchair Curling team has its challenges. One of the biggest is getting together for practice. The team includes members that live in Wisconsin, New York and Massachusetts. With the athletes spread out so far, the team gets together only once a month for a four-day camp.


When the team isn’t together, the athletes are responsible for practicing on their own. And even though Brown and Schieber aren’t there to see the athletes practicing, they have taken measures to make sure the work is getting done.


“You can either assume that people are carrying out their on-ice practice, because you can’t be there to see them doing it, or you can institute measures that document that they have been maintaining their on-ice presence,” Schieber said. “We do a combination of the two. We assume that everybody is going to practice, but we do have a required skill-set that’s done for score that’s administered every two weeks.”


Seeing team members just four days a month also means the coaches have to be extra observant to how the team is coming together.


“The perception of what you feel is happening amongst your team may not truly be what’s happening,” Schieber said. “When they’re all dispersed like that, we have to communicate with them affectively. We have to ask the right questions and we have to kind of read between the lines of, are things going the direction we want them to go, or are there areas that we need to explore.”


And if the coaches do their job, the team should be in position to medal in Sochi in March. If the team does medal, it will be the first Paralympic curling medal the United States has ever won.
The key to winning that medal, according to Schieber, is finishing. Team members have changed over the years – this year’s team includes only two members who played in the Vancouver games four years ago – but the one thing that seems to have stayed the same has been struggles in the medal round.


The late struggles started in at the World Championships in Vancouver in 2009, when the team won the round robin with a 7-2 record, but still failed to medal.


“We needed one more win to get any medal,” Schieber said. “It didn’t matter. One more win and you’re getting a medal. In two games, we couldn’t get that win.”


At last year’s World Championships, the team finished fourth again.


“What this team has to do is finish. We are so tired of coming in fourth, that it’s incredibly frustrating,” Schieber said. “We play phenomenal through the front end of a competition, and we tend to, at the end of a competition, to pull back.


“I think that’s attention to detail. We can play stone for stone with any team in the world.”

Team Canada plays against Team BC in cross Canada Tour!




Submission by: Vince Miele







Team BC had a chance to play a couple of games with Team Canada while the were practicing at the Richmond Curling Club. It gave an opportunity to play a few competative games before Provincial playdowns on the weekend of Jan 24th in Coquitlam.







"Gary Cormack, Darryl Neighbour and Vince Miele along with our 'designated sweeper' Gary Sutcliffe entered the Marpole Masters Bonspiel this past Monday to Wednesday and ended up 4th out of 12 teams in our draw...not bad. "