Registered: Sep 2011
Location: Scarborough
Posts: 2

Are Canadian Senior curlers an afterthought?
Imagine Curling Canada, with a huge assist from the provincial curling associations, moving back the age qualification date for Canadian Seniors by 6 months at the AGM in June 2016 for the 2016-2017 curling season, thereby disqualifying half the new cohort for the 2017 Canadian Senior championship, play downs for which started as early as November 11/2016 (in Saskatchewan), and this in a year when changes in play down structures in Ontario have been made to increase participation in many events.
Imagine now if Curling Canada and Curl ON websites (and other provincial association’s websites) made no mention of the change until November 24th 2016, after a meeting on November 23rd where, in the words of Stephen Chernier, executive director of Curl ON, “an attempt to correct the error was initiated, but due to some member associations having already qualified teams under this summer’s provision an agreement to make a friendly amendment could not be approved. This issue will be rectified in the summer of 2017 to the make the age eligibility match that of the World Curling Federation.” The mistake Chernier refers to is moving back the age qualifying date 6 months when the intention was to move it forward 6 months.
Mistake or not, sufficient notice was not given, for as any curler clearly understands, the jockeying for players to create new teams for the next season, both club and competitive, begins as soon as the last rock is thrown in the current season. Then follows the planning of the team’s agenda, registration for events, new outfits, training regimes etc. For this reason qualification changes are usually made well in advance (e.g. recently 1 year notice was given for a one day change in the Canadian Junior qualification date) so that teams can go forward understanding what is required to qualify.
While it is nice to know the mistake is to be corrected, what of the other mistakes? Lack of consultation of the very people affected by the change (senior curlers), lack of the necessary delay in implementing the change to allow for compliance, lack of actual communication of the qualification change itself until 4 months after it was made. Any of the above accommodations would have avoided this brouhaha, since the stakeholders (senior curlers) would surely not have missed the import of the error when it happened and all could have been made well in time for this season. At this point there are teams that have geared up for this event that cannot go forward due to one or more teammates now too young for seniors. There are no replacement players even if one decided to go that route. Many have committed to teams or have conflicting schedules due to other overlapping curling events.
Perhaps the Curling federations need to seek representation from their stakeholders in order to stay focused on serving the members of their federations. Last time I checked the vast majority of curlers at our local club are senior curlers. What has happened here is just a lack of attention to the needs of the people they are meant to serve. Pity.

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Registered: Oct 2004
Location: Twin Snowbanks
Posts: 2068

articulated clearly. huge CF.

I think all within the age range of both directions of the error should be eligible. Wholly mess up. Shameful.

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Lots of major youth (<21) events. Nice for Murdoch... and us :-D.

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