Registered: Nov 2014
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Posts: 6

Those of you who received the may edition of the US curling news might have seen a piece on page 15 about possible changes to how we do juniors.

Possible changes:

Go to a zonal playdown for junior nationals as some states may have 2 or 3 teams that are better than the next states best, and there have been an increase in the number of teams with members from multiple regions anyways.

Reducing the number of teams at junior nationals to allow for double knockout provision.

They do point out in the article that this could create a lot of travel expense for inexperienced teams who just want playdown experience, especially teams from Alaska.

They also mention at the end about having two separate events, Junior Nationals, and some kind junior worlds qualification event.

Thoughts?

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Registered: Sep 2011
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Posts: 1064

Of course...this is the next step in the HPPocracy plan to drive out anyone who isn't up to their standards of "elite".

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Registered: Jan 2012
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One of the things that I liked about regional Junior playdowns was that there were always lots of young/inexperienced teams that weren't good enough to win, but they came year after year and got better. Getting rid of that could be an unintended consequence of larger regional events.

On the other hand, there were not enough Junior teams in MACA/At-Large/whatever it's official name is now to have a playdown, so the boys from Denver did not get to go to Nationals so a regional approach would have worked better for them.

Jason

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Registered: Feb 2014
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Looks like we're trying to replicate the success of our men's and women's program in our juniors.

Juniors is the only thing that's still working well for USA curling, and it's the only thing feeding our limited mens/womens fields. Our junior system is dependent on participation, getting young crappy "un-dedicated" teams in, playing and developing them. You already see a noticable difference in the quantity and makeup of the field when you move the playdown spot across a state. There's absolutely no need to take an entire states out of the mix, increase distance from playdowns, and turn nationals into another quasi-nationals.

Everybody in those tough states should understand that they need to work to be (or beat) the best team in the state if they want to represent it at nationals (some of that was lost with HPP rule changes/ free rides). If you can't do that, you have no right to be at nationals, even if you think you're better than a team from a weaker region. If you can't beat them at state, you probably can't beat them at nationals. Practice your ass off and beat them next year. Our teams aren't going to toughen up by softening competition.

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