I Just Miss Curling

Decisions, decisions.

I have felt strangely removed from the world of curling. I have not thrown a rock since mid-December, as we once again find ourselves in a shitty, Covid-induced lockdown in Quebec. Once again, I can go the mall but not the curling club; to Canadian Tire but not the provincials.

This wave feels a bit more intense. I am in Montreal, and it feels like everyone I know has gotten Covid this time. Hospitals are overloaded, so once again, we will shut down our activities and events with the goal of containing the seemingly uncontainable and protecting our overworked healthcare workers.

It is exasperating. I truly feel for the people in healthcare who must be at the end of their rope.

But mostly, I just miss curling. The fall felt so good this year to be back on the ice at the pre-Trials, and at a few ’spiels. It was something to do. It was about seeing people again. I missed it so much last year, and now I find myself missing it again. It hit home while watching provincial finals from the less-afflicted West. It looked like so much fun. Damn, I hope this variant goes away quickly so we can have some form of provincials. I just want to play.

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Curling Twitter melted down this week as two big decisions are coming.

Both decisions have one thing in common: they are the results of damn Covid. The latest wave of the pandemic has cancelled or delayed all curling provincials in Ontario and Quebec and resulted in the cancellation of the Canada’s Mixed Doubles Olympic Trials. As we learned last year, even when provincials or trials get cancelled, the show must go on. So provincial organizations and Curling Canada find themselves once again in the position of having to pick winners instead of giving teams a chance to play for it.

Quebec Men

The Quebec men’s provincials have been postponed for now. With the Brier only happening in March after the Olympics, we have until mid-February to declare a representative. I sincerely hope that we get to play a provincial in some format. I am hearing Curling Quebec is trying to stage a shortened event in February. Fingers crossed.

Quebec Women

Curling Quebec has made the only logical choice— Laurie St-Georges will represent la Belle Province at the Scotties. 

Laurie is a deserving choice, but make no mistake, this still sucks for women’s curling. There are other teams practicing, training, travelling. And once again, for the second year in a row, they are told there is no provincial championship. While this will be good for Laurie, it is a disaster for women’s curling in Quebec, which was already hurting in terms of participation.

Canadian Mixed Doubles Olympic Trials

This Mixed Doubles shootout also fell victim to Covid, and Curling Canada finds itself having to select a team. This is about as loaded a decision as you can get. You are picking a mixed doubles team to go to the Olympics. THE OLYMPICS!

The Olympics can be life-changing. An Olympic medal opens doors to a lot of different career options. And someone will get hand-picked for this.

Sadly, there is no obvious choice. There is no choice that will not seem massively unfair to the 16 teams that trained, practiced and worked for four years to get to the finals.

I think, ultimately, they have to choose Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant, who actually were not even included in the 16-team Trials field. They will both already be in Beijing playing in the four-person events, and are arguably the most successful mixed doubles team in Canada. The self-imposed rule that curlers should not play in both the four-person and mixed doubles events always seemed a bit artificial, and now is a good time to put it to bed. This is clearly the least shitty choice.

Any other choice makes no sense.

Kerri Einarson/Brad Jacobs? Should we send a team to the Olympics that have never played a game together before? No.

Laura Walker/Kirk Muyers or Kadriana Sahaidak/Colton Lott? How can we send a team that did not win? Both are great teams and would represent well, but neither has been the best.

Nancy Martin/Tyrel Griffith? This is probably the best choice in terms of the integrity of the process, as they are the top-ranked team that is still eligible. But few would have picked them to win the Trials.

Rachel Homan/John Morris seems like the next logical choice, as they are a high-ranked mixed doubles team with Olympic experience. But … Homan has not played well this year. They did not play the 2021 nationals as Homan was having a baby. It just does not seem like their year. But they would be my second choice.

Ontario Women

This was the strangest of choices. Ontario postponed their Scotties, so also found themselves having to pick their representative for the Jan. 8-Feb. 6 nationals.

And pick they did, kind of. They chose Team Rachel Homan—UNLESS—she gets the call to play mixed doubles at the Olympics. In that case, they would choose Hollie Duncan.

This one is brutal. For those of you who do not know Hollie Duncan (née Nichol), her team is a Toronto-based foursome that has been having a career-best season. They won cashspiels, played themselves into the Slams, and were qualified in Ontario provincials as the top CTRS team in Ontario, narrowly ahead of Homan. But then Homan played the regional qualifiers for provincials, and passed Duncan in points.

There is a strong case to be made that Duncan should have been chosen, based on the fact they were leading the CTRS race before the start of the provincial qualifying process.

But Homan is Homan. Although they are having what they would surely admit is not one of their better seasons, they are still Team Rachel Homan. And they are as of today, the top-ranked CTRS team in the province.

So the OCA hedged their bets: Rachel (if she can make it), Hollie if she can’t. This was an intellectually dishonest ruling and made EVERYBODY angry. Which leads me to think they probably got it right. Picking Homan straight up would have been unfair to Nichol. Picking Nichol would have been unfair to Homan. So they split the difference. Brilliant.

This weird compromise ruling has a certain fairness about it, despite the fact it is inconsistent with any precedent or logic. It was an attempt at being Solomon-esque by first cutting the baby in two, and then asking whose it was.

And if you thought this was complicated, wait until Curling Canada rules on who gets into the Scotties wild-card game. Drama! At least this has made everyone forget about the Bottcher-Moulding thing.

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A shout-out to an old teammate/friend who will be playing in her first Canadian women’s championship. Christie Gamble plays third for Penny Barker, and they just defeated Chelsea Carey for the right to represent Saskatchewan at the Scotties. It always warms my heart when desire is coupled with hard work and perseverance to achieve something great. I look forward to watching them.

I spent the holidays re-watching a lot of the classic sport movies; Hoosiers, The Natural, A League of Their Own, Rocky (I and IV), Rudy. The hokey, feel-good, underdog sports movie is my favorite genre. There is something about the scrappy underdog story that inspires me.

If you like these movies, here is a secret for you: there are feel-good sports movies happening all over the curling world, if you know where to look for them. Provincial finals every year produce a few. Christie’s story is one of them.