Registered: Mar 2006
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I'll start this post off with full disclosure on my preference for this event - similar to Flashing8 and fresca, I too would prefer the Canadian Junior Championship be a full round robin event where every team plays every other team. So no disagreement from me on that.

However, let's bring logistics into the equation because, in the end, that is what drives the format of events.

Curling Canada tends to (not exclusively so, but tends to) hold this event in towns/cities that would not otherwise host a Scotties or a Brier - there are exceptions, yes; Calgary has hosted a Canadian Juniors as has Red Deer and there are probably others that I can't name off the top of my head who have also hosted Briers and/or Scotties. These other locations tend to be smaller centres with not as much available curling ice. CC has committed to having the junior championship be played with a minimum of one arena venue - the juniors had a nice bonus this year with two arenas and 10 sheets of arena ice. That won't happen every year. More often than not, there is one arena (5 sheets) and a curling rink (often with less than 5 sheets). This can leave a scenario where there will only be 8 sheets of ice available.

Two full 14-team round robins require 182 games. With 8 sheets of ice, that would require 23 draws. With round robin play starting on a Saturday and finishing the following Friday, and presuming 3 draws a day, that would allow for 21 draws - oops, we're two draws short and there's been no accounting for possible tie-breakers....

Obviously, with 10 sheets as there was for this year's event, you could make it happen - 182 games on 10 sheets would require 19 draws and you'd still have two draw times available on Friday to play tie-breaker games.

So now the question becomes, do you now decide to play this event in locations where there must be 10 sheets of ice available - 5 in an arena and a 5 sheet or larger curling rink; 2 arenas that can provide 10 sheets of ice; 2 neighbouring communities that can each offer 5 sheets of ice; etc. - or do you still stay with locations that can only provide 8 sheets of ice?

Other possible options exist. In 8 sheet scenarios, you could have three 4-draw days earlier in the competition - this would allow for two extra draws for the round robin and free up one draw for a possible tie-breaker. That's a possibility, but 4-draw days really squeeze the day. To allow for scraping between draws and pre-game practice sessions, there is a 4.5 hours between draw time requirement (you could trim it to 4.25 hours, but that would get skinny when you have an extra end game on a prior draw) so a 4-draw day would require draws at 8:00, 12:30, 5:00, and 9:30 or 7:30, 12:00, 4:30, and 9:00. Doable, but not very palatable.

The long and the short of what I'm trying to say is, before you start being too critical of the format being used, you must consider all factors. Ice availability is a big part of it.

Flashing8 also mentioned the mixed doubles component of the junior nationals and indicated that for a few of the players they considered it a waste of time and that they'd rather not play. That may, in fact, be the case, but consider Curling Canada's position on mixed doubles. They are actually trying to develop that game format in Canada such that Canadian teams can start to see some international success with it becoming an Olympic discipline. I think that using the junior championship as a way to expose players at a younger age to the mixed doubles format is not a horrible waste of time. Remember that Curling Canada foots the bill for the players and coaches to travel to the event and their accommodation so the players do have some payback responsibility to Curling Canada and, in this case, it's the mixed doubles if your provincial team does not make playoffs. You'd have to look pretty deep into amateur sport in Canada to find any other national body that puts as much into a junior national championship for their sport as Curling Canada does for their junior championship.

That's a very long-winded way of saying yes, I would personally prefer to see a full round robin for this event but given the logistics of two 14-team round robin events, the ice requirements are too onerous for Curling Canada to guarantee a good event in that format year in and year out so they have tried to come up with a viable compromise that does still pit best against the best in determining a national champion. Three world gold medals (two by Kelsey Rocque, one by Braden Calvert) over the past two curling seasons would indicate that Canada is still sending pretty good teams to the World Junior Curling Championship.

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