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10-29-14 07:25PM |
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AlanMacNeill
Super Rockchucker
Registered: Sep 2011
Location:
Posts: 1064 |
Geez...was it that long ago?
http://www.pittsburghcurlingclub.co..._Fall_20111.pdf
Damn, you're right, it was...time does fly.
Doesn't change my point, nom....if you take a gander at all of the "NHL Team visits curling club" stories, you'll notice almost all of them are on a road trip when it happens. Players need something to do when they're on the road. When they're at home...they're...at home...
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10-29-14 07:29PM |
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SPMFromPCC
Swing Artist
Registered: Jun 2007
Location:
Posts: 440 |
I don't think anyone doubts that auto-berthing the Jr champions into Nationals gets them good arena ice experience and prep for worlds. The problem is that you're removing an opportunity for another up-and-coming team to get that same experience. It's absolutely narrowing the window.
If all you're concerned with is getting the top point earners on tour, then why even have a challenge round? I've said it a million times: it's an extremely small group who can afford to play enough to earn those points (including those who don't play on their own dime at all, I.E. the HP teams).
Sooner or later, it wouldn't surprise me to see the challenge round eliminated completely, and Nationals made into a four team event: two HP teams and two points teams. If the impetus is to remove any possibility of a bad team getting hot once and qualifying, that oughta do it.
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10-29-14 09:34PM |
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jamcan
Super Rockchucker
Registered: Sep 2002
Location: vernon bc
Posts: 2340 |
Time for a Canadian to chime in...
Two weeks back at the Kamloops Crown of Curling, I had the opportunity to discuss your situation with the Brady Clark team. It left me shaking my head in disbelief.
To think that last year your Womens National Champions were not allowed to compete at the worlds after winning that right is horrible.
Wait, let me backtrack on that. To think that they didn't get to go to worlds because the team they beat in your championship happened to be able to compete in more cashspiels than the team that won is horrible.
But then, you have one Derek Brown in charge of your HP program. Those that remember the Rhona Martin fiasco know his name.
So now instead of allowing your winning teams to gain experience at the world level and improve, you have an individual with a track record of being dictatorial and not successful basically deciding who goes-or at least creating an unfair playing field and rules designed solely to help those his group deems as superior.
And, BTW, how's that workin' for ya? No offense to the team that went to the women's worlds, but they fared likely no better than your champs would have.
Truth is, until you curlers and clubs stage a revolt, get rid of Brown and his ilk, the USA will not improve and things will get progressively worse.
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Hunter S. Thompson
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10-30-14 12:03AM |
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dbsdbs
Drawmaster
Registered: Feb 2013
Location:
Posts: 812 |
quote: Originally posted by jamcan
Truth is, until you curlers and clubs stage a revolt, get rid of Brown and his ilk, the USA will not improve and things will get progressively worse.
Interesting viewpoint. I think lots of USA curlers agree with you but also don't feel like there is much they can about it.
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10-30-14 01:35AM |
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rbi
Hitting Paint
Registered: May 2014
Location:
Posts: 143 |
quote: Originally posted by Gerry
What berthing them into the Nationals does is give them experience on the arena ice, and a great week of preparation right before they head off to the World Juniors.
Seems nice, but that's not a National Championship.
I cannot think of a single national championship (in any sport, in any nation) that accepts as a goal "give our kids (who apparently cannot qualify on their own) a week of preparation so that they can go on to a junior competition".
BTW, I don't think World Juniors is played on arena ice, is it?
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10-30-14 03:20AM |
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Alice
Swing Artist
Registered: Feb 2012
Location:
Posts: 324 |
That's right HP Coaching Team! Forget about "school" for our juniors. Who needs school anyway. Let those young ones start being full time professional curlers ....as ...soon ...as ...possible. Make them prove their total commitment. Ooo! when they are old enough they can go to World University Games until age 28 and to qualify for that they only need to take three community college credits within the last year or so to be considered "University" students.
But, what a pity when they hit age 23, the age of Miss Muirhead when she found out she was bumped from the Scottish championship by her nation's elite programmers so all her "peak" efforts that year went to Sochi glory and thus be unable to defend her World Title to make room for some younger ones to get some world experience that year for the glory of the national program.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/...uirhead-2056084
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10-30-14 03:35AM |
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Gerry
CZ Founder
Registered: Sep 2002
Location: London, Ontario
Posts: 4002 |
quote: Originally posted by rbi
Seems nice, but that's not a National Championship.
I cannot think of a single national championship (in any sport, in any nation) that accepts as a goal "give our kids (who apparently cannot qualify on their own) a week of preparation so that they can go on to a junior competition".
BTW, I don't think World Juniors is played on arena ice, is it?
1. The top junior teams would qualify on their own if they did not have a conflict. The top junior teams rank inside the Top 10 of all USA teams in OOM.
2. Often the World Juniors are held in arenas, including this year in Estonia. It is.
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10-30-14 10:31AM |
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nom de broom
Harvey Hacksmasher
Registered: Jan 2012
Location:
Posts: 84 |
Thanks Hot Shot and Alan for the clarification...of course using spare road show days for teambuilding makes a lot of sense. I'm glad to hear the LA Kings visit in 2011 got a lot of coverage and I'm sure the PR brought in many curious potentials who are now active members of Potomac. Grass roots FTW!
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[Original Ray's] nom de broom
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10-30-14 11:08AM |
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SetonHallPirate
Harvey Hacksmasher
Registered: Sep 2014
Location:
Posts: 15 |
quote: Originally posted by Gerry
1. The top junior teams would qualify on their own if they did not have a conflict. The top junior teams rank inside the Top 10 of all USA teams in OOM.
2. Often the World Juniors are held in arenas, including this year in Estonia. It is.
Just to add about World Juniors, they are always held in the Olympic city the year before the Games, as the Olympic test event. So, for example, the 2017 World Juniors will be in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
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10-30-14 11:46AM |
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dbsdbs
Drawmaster
Registered: Feb 2013
Location:
Posts: 812 |
quote: Originally posted by rbi
Seems nice, but that's not a National Championship.
I cannot think of a single national championship (in any sport, in any nation) that accepts as a goal "give our kids (who apparently cannot qualify on their own) a week of preparation so that they can go on to a junior competition".
it?
Can you think of any sport that tells its national champ they cannot go to worlds because they did not win enough points in earlier events? USA curling does lots of things differently.
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10-30-14 05:17PM |
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SPMFromPCC
Swing Artist
Registered: Jun 2007
Location:
Posts: 440 |
quote: Originally posted by Gerry
1. The top junior teams would qualify on their own if they did not have a conflict. The top junior teams rank inside the Top 10 of all USA teams in OOM.
Just because I'm in that kind of mood:
- Unless those teams are #1 or #2 on the U.S. OOM, they haven't "qualified" for anything. (I can't find the OOM list on the USA Curling page, all I found was an inactive link)
- The method by which they are actually qualifying is completely different (and against different competition) than every other team trying to get there.
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10-30-14 06:07PM |
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rbi
Hitting Paint
Registered: May 2014
Location:
Posts: 143 |
quote: Originally posted by dbsdbs
Can you think of any sport that tells its national champ they cannot go to worlds because they did not win enough points in earlier events? USA curling does lots of things differently.
Not sure. It seems that some countries hand-pick their world curling teams. I do agree that it was discouraging watching Nina Spatola's team win last year and then not qualify for Worlds and then USA worlds team finished 6th at an Olympic-depleted Worlds.
There are at least three specific things that USA Curling has done to de-value its national championship:
1. take away the champion's automatic berth to worlds (although Tuck will be relieved to learn that it is still OK to give birth at worlds)
2. give exemptions to HP teams regardless of whether they have played well.
3. give exemptions to junior champions regardless of whether they have shown they can compete with the adults.
BTW, I'm in favor of giving exemptions to top USA OOM points-earning teams. Other sports do that, and it seems to be a good way to reward sustained success.
The three steps listed above all make sense if we are trying to run an "HP Development Event," but they don't make sense for a national championship.
And I would much prefer that USA Curling do everything it can to pump up the prestige, respect and interest in the US National Curling Championships. US Nats is one thing that is going well for USA Curling. It offers a week of competition among USA's top curling teams, an impressive arena venue, excellent ice, men and women competing during the same week at the same venue, high-quality web stream coverage during the round robin, (sometimes) TV coverage during the playoffs/finals, great social media coverage and lots of noisy fans (at least in Philadelphia). In recent years it has been way more exciting than (for example) the European Championships.
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10-30-14 06:33PM |
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dbsdbs
Drawmaster
Registered: Feb 2013
Location:
Posts: 812 |
Two teams in Womens Nationals last year finished with 1-8 records. Crazy to suggest that junior champ would dilute the field.
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10-30-14 09:03PM |
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Frykenstein
Harvey Hacksmasher
Registered: Mar 2009
Location:
Posts: 61 |
I also think it's unlikely that our junior champs would dilute the field, but the poor showing of those two teams last year is an artifact of probability theory as much as poor performance. In any field of 10 teams you'll have teams with records like that. Glenn Howard's team went 2-5 at the Canadian Oly trials last year, and nobody would say their presence diluted the field.
mf
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10-30-14 10:49PM |
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Mowgli
Knee-Slider
Registered: Feb 2014
Location:
Posts: 9 |
These changes further from open playdowns are really sh*t when it comes to growing competitive curlers. Once Juniors age out, they're either already in the HP program or screwed. I imagine it's incredibly hard to bring a team together to play down when the USCA has already picked two teams, and young curlers they don't have the money to run around to every cashspiel to get points. So even if they beat everybody they aren't getting a shot at worlds. Now you've got to get 4 guys on board, willing to spend a lot of time and money to compete for 1 of 5 spots in a competition that doesn't go anywhere. It's not good for anybody, you see a lot of guys that walk away. And you can say they're not dedicated, but there's probably 1-2 guys on those "scrub" teams that would be dedicated and building good teams if they were playing down every year. Right now the message received from the playdown system is "don't bother" and it's not bringing anything good to USA curling.
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10-31-14 10:53AM |
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MNIceman
Hitting Paint
Registered: Feb 2011
Location: Plymouth, MN
Posts: 159 |
I don't think dilution of the field is the issue. There are a few top Jr. teams in the country that could, not would Gerry, qualify out of the challenge round.
The issue is using our National Championship as practice games for the juniors. Will the USCA actually send our Jr team to both Jr and Men's/Women's Worlds if they win? Maybe they should just have the Jr teams there and make their games practice games for everyone so they don't count for the standings.
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10-31-14 11:28AM |
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TNH
Hitting Paint
Registered: May 2011
Location:
Posts: 161 |
I believe the junior team beat Peja Lindholm and represented Sweden at the 2006 worlds in Lowell (a younger Mr. Edin was vice that year). So it defintely can happen, especially if there are few elite teams the juniors would have to beat to become Team USA.
I would have to believe the USCA has already decided how they will handle this situation as it is totally reasonable to expect a junior team to win nationals.
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10-31-14 01:10PM |
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MiniMark
Hitting Paint
Registered: Jan 2012
Location: DeWitt, MI
Posts: 100 |
Don't forget
Unless the Jr HP team has enough OOM points to go to worlds, they won't go regardless of how well they finish. The don't get any points for winning Junior Nats- do they?
Rather than blow the whole thing up at once, the USCA has kind of done it in stages, over the course of a couple of years. Undeniably, the desire to raise the level of play at the National Championship Event is the goal here. There are many ways to approach the goal. While this is not my personal favorite, I'm willing to give it a chance for a couple of years.
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10-31-14 01:11PM |
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dbsdbs
Drawmaster
Registered: Feb 2013
Location:
Posts: 812 |
If anything I thought putting junior champ in USA Nationals made sense, but must admit that above posts by Mowgli and MNIceman argument have changed my mind on this.
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10-31-14 03:09PM |
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runinrock
Harvey Hacksmasher
Registered: Jul 2013
Location: 216
Posts: 41 |
Why not just qualify the top 10 OOM teams? or maybe the top 8 OOM teams and the 2 HP teams? Rather than forcing everyone to fly to one location for the challenge round (which this year is brilliantly planned for Seattle, very easy and cheap to fly too, HA). This way teams can use their money/time/resources to play wherever they want. For example, Brady can spend his time up in BC or AB, east teams can spend their time in ON...etc...what's the point of a challenge round to qualify like 5 teams..... seems silly.
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10-31-14 08:08PM |
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hkempenich
Harvey Hacksmasher
Registered: Sep 2014
Location:
Posts: 10 |
The objective
The only objective that USCA has with the whole scheme is what USOC tells them to do: get good enough to win a gold medal in the Olympics. They have a theory that the more professional the players are, the more likely they are to win the gold.
USOC was fed up with the way things were done because the US teams didn't do well in the last few Olympic Games. The US teams were good at beating each other for the slot at Worlds and Olympics, but they were not good at beating high-level international competition.
The idea is that teams that play more international competition don't necessarily beat other US teams, but can beat more foreign teams at Worlds and Olympics.
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10-31-14 11:01PM |
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gonzobob
Harvey Hacksmasher
Registered: Apr 2013
Location: Brooklyn Park, MN
Posts: 33 |
quote: Originally posted by dbsdbs
Can you think of any sport that tells its national champ they cannot go to worlds because they did not win enough points in earlier events? USA curling does lots of things differently.
Triathlon. For elite level olympic-distance triathlon (the distance raced at the Olympic games), each national governing body submits a list of athletes for the world championship but that does not even guarantee that the athletes get to compete as they must also meet the selection criteria of the International Triathlon Union (which runs the world championships), which is mainly points earned at ITU series events.
But there is not an elite level olympic-distance national championship triathlon in the USA anymore. If there were, winning it wouldn't mean anything and would probably just detract from athletes being able to focus on the ITU series. The USA curling national championship may be headed for a similar fate.
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