Whimventure® to Canadia, Curling in the Great White North.
The Inaugural Rock League Weekend
This year’s curling season came to a close and I have accomplished a few goals, but still am a neophyte when it comes to the art and science of curling. Yes, like many people I watched it during the Olympics, I also became a certified Junior assistant trainee instructor at my local Curling Club. I even helped prepare the ice for the Wednesday morning league. So like many things- I have kinda did a swan dive into the shallow end (I did that once as a kid- my nose still shows the results of that effort). I had heard over the interwebs about an attempt to create a professional Curling League, and decided (not to try out- duh!) to see what it was all about.
When you think about professional sports you think of seasons, and teams, stars, and stuff like that. When I think about professional sports I tend to think of… well nothing. I’ve never been into sports of any kind. I tried football (except in the U.S. it’s called “Soccer”) as a kid- still have nightmares about that time my parents sent me to soccer camp. My older brother was the athlete. Growing up I got shuffled into whatever he was doing - Springboard diving as a kid. He was excellent at it- me… not so much. I did place 5th once in a competition. After that I don’t recall if it was me, or my parents who decided that I should stop (probably a bit from Column A and a bit from Column B). Since we lived at the pool, I got signed up for swimming… I may have already mentioned my mom called me “Speedy” because I was so slow. I gave up on that too. I learned early to avoid sports and competition of any kind. This included watching sports on TV, following teams, or anything related to sports. I’d be polite and cheer teams on, but I couldn’t tell you (and still can’t) who plays for what team.
So starting a professional curling league seemed like a good place to try to embrace my inner sports fan. The Rock League was the place to start even if many of the curlers I knew either scoffed at it, or hadn’t even heard of it. The “inaugural season” this year was one event, which lasted a week. Usually a season is a number of games spanning a few months and a variety of locations. Rock League - One event, I can do that. The league is usually a number of teams usually each with a home base. Rock League has six teams. Geography gets a little weird, they really don’t have a “hometown.” I’m probably looking at wrong, but here’s how I broke it down:
Maple United - Canada
Shield Curling Club - Canada
Frontier Curling Club - United States
Northern United - Northern Europe
Alpine Curling Club - Central Europe
Typhoon Curling Club - Asia and Oceania
As with any professional sports team the players actually came from various locales so I could be completely off on my geography. Which brings me to another thing- I’m not great with names… I don’t know who all the players are. I hope to get better, but two years in and not really having a good place in the U.S. to watch the best play, outside of the Olympics I have very little idea as to who I should be cheering on.
As a U.S. citizen (according to all the legal documents I need to vote) I guess I should cheer for the Frontier Curling Club… as a person with ancestry from Sweden and Scotland my other option was Northern United. I wasn’t the only one as I kept hearing fans while we were there trying to figure out who they should cheer for. I finally settled for Northern United, something about some of the Frontier players tearing off the sleeves of their shirts (I guess to look “cool” Iguess it’s the US version of the Norwegian curling pants), and the general depression about the current state of politics in the U.S. - I know there’s no politics in sportsing! Just ask the NFL about their Super Bowl halftime show. Sue and I actually were pretty neutral and just cheered for “Good Curling” all around. And there was a lot to cheer about on that front.
Day by Day- How Things Worked
Like the Olympics it started with round robin play to determine seeding for the playoffs. In this each team played a men’s, women’s, and mixed doubles game. So three sheets were being used at once. Each day had three scheduled times. You could spend the day and watch all the teams. We discovered our weekend tickets didn’t actually start until 7:00 PM Friday, so we paid for the first match and then took a break before the Friday night event Maple United vs. Shield Curling Club- Basically Canada vs. Canada.
The venue was interesting with floor curling available for those interested in the “fan Zone”, the “Rock Shop” for souvenirs, along with food and drink concessions. Rock League promoted a sheet side option, the “Between the Sheets Pub,” for an extra charge. This was a bar between Sheets A and B and you could watch what was going on about a meter away from the action. This also made it difficult for people to see what was going on on all three sheets since there was a crowd standing between two sheets. The other thing that was interesting was the same competitions occurred on the same sheets. So Sheet A was always mixed doubles, Sheet B was always men’s and Sheet C was always women’s. Which translated to, if you weren’t interested in the mixed doubles, you needed to make sure you had West Concourse seats to be able to see Sheets B & C.
Scoring was pretty much a point for each sheet the team won, and an extra half point if the team swept all the matches. Ties were broken by comparing the number of points the team had accumulated throughout the event.
The playoffs were only on two sheets and consisted of mixed teams. Basically how things tend to work at a Curling Club. This was a bit more enjoyable to watch. Yes, I still didn’t know all the players, but it was more like what I was used to watching. Not all the players played, but substitutions were allowed if needed. so the entire team was present, just eight out of ten players were actually on the ice.
The rest of the event was back to three sheets like the round robin matches. The first teams out were Maple United and Frontier Curling Club. After that we got down to the finals- Shield Curling Club against Typhoon Curling Club. there were some amazing shots and it got down to the wire.
If I was an extrovert I’d have jumped right into the pub and paid the extra to hang out there. Many of the curlers not playing would stop in to watch. As an introvert and a rule follower it was hard for me to not want to got to my seat and watch from there. Which I learned I really didn’t have to do. The venue was not full, or maybe since those folks at the exclusive bar weren’t using their seats it didn’t look too full.
Sue and I figured out that we could see a lot more of the action from the top level and spent most of our time away from our seats and just watching as much as we could.
Overall Impressions
Can there really be too much curling? For Sue, the answer (like Ancient Astronaut Theorists like to say) is “Yes.” Not following or know much about the players made it fun to watch, but hard to get overly excited about. Yes, there were som great plays, but you might miss them as you focus on the action on another sheet. Think of it as trying to watch three baseball games at the same time. Just as you focus on one game, some other game has an amazing play. Multi-tasking is not my strong suit when in comes to watching any sport. I had the same issue when watching the U.S. Nationals.
The curling was amazing, even though some trolls on the interwebs were claiming the players weren’t trying hard enough 🙄. There were some rule changes to up the excitement. The one I really liked was in the last end if you had a stone covering the pin (the very center of the button) your team would get an extra point. This did change the outcome of a few matches. Helping amp up the power of the hammer (last rock thrown).
Rachel Homan (Maple United) had written a Curling ABC book, which I purchased and had the opportunity to get signed. Being an old elementary school teacher I know the power of putting complex ideas into simple terms for kids which is helpful for adults trying to digest what everyone is talking about.
While in Canada I did pick up some new curling shoes, along with a cookie cutter. I was planning on going to some of the company stores, but many were closed since the season was over. I did end up buying a Northern United jersey, something I would have worn on team spirit day at school. It’s nice and warm and happen to be in the colors of the Swedish flag even though its got a Norwegian players name on it… That’s what happens when you arrive on Friday and the SWAG is all but sold out.
There were a few things they could improve… The first thing for me would be to eliminate assigned seats. it really wouldn’t matter so until you sell out. Most people didn’t seem to mind moving around. Next they only had one video display… my club has a camera on each sheet (we have three) and one over each house. Being able to watch what is happening on each sheet and even having replays of great shots would be helpful. They would also switch to interviews of players and VIPs, without any sound or captioning. So the screen would fill with a guy (I didn’t know) commenting on some important thing that just happened (that I can’t hear). Having more screens might make it easier for everyone especially with the pub in the middle blocking the view for one side of the venue. One other solution might be to rotate what is played on each sheet. Then again there are those folks who are really into mixed doubles and may only want to see those matches.
Sue and I talked about if we would do this again… we decided that we would consider it, but only go to the playoffs, that way we could see all the teams compete over the course of the day. I would return for the finals, although on TV you see something like the Super Bowl and everyone is on the field yelling and screaming with announcers talking to people. I now know what happens in the stands during these made for TV moments… people start heading home. Once the trophy was handed to Shield Curling Club, we hung around a bit, but while there was celebrating on the floor, not much to keep the audience hanging around.
I think having a badge for the weekend might have been nice instead of having to manage my tickets for each match. It also would have been a nice souvenir. The lanyard & badge was available for the Pub and VIPs.
Norwegian curling pants are cool.
Bet it felt good to get into Canada and realax with the excitement of 3 sheets of curling going on at once! And not having to prepare the ice must have been a treat! Like the rule changes since they further promote accuracy. Glad you had a good time!