LOOKING BACK: Returning to the grassroots: confessions of a busy curling writer

I'm waking up this blog! 

I left my job at Curling Canada in 2019, just after my first Young Adult book was published. Since then, my writing life has been all about writing fiction for teens, and my curling life has been about playing at the club, leading Learn To Curls, and watching all those curlers on TV that I used to write about - everything from club bonspiels to national and international events. (Well, and then there was that time spent staying home because there was a global pandemic, of course...) 

In other words, I'm a working author and a curling fan with a bit of inside knowledge. 

But there's some good stuff on this blog from days gone by, so I'll pick and choose a little bit of content to share and, I hope, write some new stuff, too. Lots going on in the curling world these days, and hey, I could talk (and write) curling all day. So, here we go, a look back to April 2013, as my curling season wrapped up. (Note: The links are a little clunky, but they still work!)

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April 2013

Because my day job is editing and writing stories for the CCA website, this blog – which I always intended to be my place to write about All Things Curling – has been neglected.

The view from the media bench during
the final of the 2013 Scotties in Kingston.

But the season has pretty well come to an end for me. The events are done, the regular columns I write and edit are done, and I am subsiding into maintenance mode.

It was a terrific season, full of great stories on and off the ice. Here's a sample of the more grassroots-type stories I worked on during the 2012-2013 curling season:

The 13-year-old blogger in Kingston who has become curling’s biggest fan

Some savvy curling club managers who keep things hopping at their clubs – Scott Comfort, in Wadena, Sask. And Bobby Ray in North Bay, Ont.

The growth of wheelchair curling at the first-ever national summit on the sport, and Andy Jones, a curling coach from Alberta who has lots to say about the coaching side of wheelchair curling.

Coach Helen Radford talked about working with four young curlers as they prepared to compete at the first-ever Youth Olympic Games last year, and coach Gerry Richard shared the ups and downs of coaching his daughter at the highest levels of curling competition.

The Minister of State (Sport), the Honourable Bal Gosal took to the ice at the Ottawa Curling Club last Fall with Rachel Homan, Craig Savill and coach Earle Morris to see what curling was all about (and he did great, apparently!).

There were anniversaries at Annandale, and Chatham, and Vancouver.

But even though the ice is out, that doesn’t mean the sport sleeps during the summer. There are summer spiels coming up, and clubs doing renovations, and changes to some of the high-performance teams (here’s a great piece by Bob Weeks on the recent departure of John Morris from the Kevin Martin team.)

Lots of news still coming down the pipe from all over the country and the world. So the focus is now on sharing more stories over the summer. Stories about curling - especially the grassroots!

CurlingGeek is for curling geeks - I mean, fans - anywhere

So, there I am at the Capital One Road to the Roar - the Canadian Olympic Pre-Trials - in Kitchener this past week, watching Draws 1-18 until I think even I have the tricky ice on Sheet E figured out...

I'm writing a game summary to go on the CCA website (yes, this is my day job) and get distracted by a question/phone call/great shot on another sheet. When I look back, there's Gushue's teaming kicking the last rocks to the backboards and walking away to huddle with the skip before the next end starts. What? The end finished and I have no idea where that steal of two came from! I look down at the ice.....

My view of the ice. So much action to keep track of!!

.....and think to myself: How can I find out what just happened?

Aha! I turn to my secret weapon called CurlingGeek. My heroes, providing shot-by-shot game animation - it looks like one of those magnetic strategy boards - with replay capability, as well as offering commentary on the action (sometimes the commentary is way more entertaining than the action. Just saying, Geeks...) AND a place to chat with other curling fans watching the game. Fans in the arena. Fans at home. Fans in other countries.

CurlingGeek on the job in the rafters
of the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium

Awesome.

Strange as it may seem in this wired age, we don't always have access to video replay. This week in Kitchener, there was no TV coverage until TSN showed up on the weekend. So what's a distracted sports writer to do? For that matter, what's a fan at home or in some distant location to do?

That's the exact void that the CurlingGeek team is trying to fill. They pick a few games (at the Road to the Roar it was two games at a time when two Geeks were on duty) and they provide an alternative on their CurlingGeek.com website for fans who want to experience the game remotely.  OK, the Geeks might not be following the game you want to see, but the Scorekeeper's Notes always include reports from other sheets in action at the same time.

And if you ARE at the game, or watching on TV, the Geeks give you a forum to chat online with other fans, comment on the game, and be part of a one-game-at-a-time curling community. In other words, you too can be a curling geek.

So here's to CurlingGeek. Check out their website during the next big curling event. Follow them on Facebook or Twitter @CurlingGeek.

Hardworking (hey, it's cold up there in the rafters of an arena!), efficient and, may I say, thinking outside the box. I'm their newest fan.