Wheelchair Curling Blog 2

It what must be a huge disappointment for Curl BC, the draw for this year’s 2012 BC Provincial wheelchair championships was released. BC was once the power house of wheelchair curling in Canada and to some extent is today but only at a national team level with 3 members of the national team coming from there. However, times have changed since Jim Armstrong moved to Ontario and what has been a steady decline in the number of active wheelchair participants. This year we only see 2 teams vying for the provincial title and this is only because team Canada members Darryl Neighbour and Sonja Gaudet were permitted to play.

Gerry Austgarden

Darryl Neighbour will be skipping his team made up of Sonja Gaudet playing third and we see the return of 2006 Paralympic Gold medalist third moving down to play second, Gerry Austgarden. Round this out with past provincial & national champion Corine Jensen playing lead and Ellis Tull as their fifth.

They will face former Provincial Champion & National Champion Gary Cormack back skipping his established team of Frank LaBounty (third), Vince Miele (second) and Allison Duddy (lead).

Gary Cormack

They will only play a best of 3 games at the McArthur Island Curling Club from Feb, 4 to Feb 5. The first game will take Feb 4 at 9 am and the second game at 2:30pm. Should a third game be required it will occur at 10 am on Feb 5. I will provide live coverage of the game scores.

This disappointing turn out is just another in a long line of Curl BC development issues surrounding wheelchair curling in the province. My hope as a former member of the Curl BC board is that this section of the sport is visited and some type of recruitment and retention process be made a priority before they end up in a position of naming a team by acclamation.