Curling Gives Women An Equal Shot

CALGARY—The women are rocking at the Markin MacPhail Centre and some fresh faces are holding their own.

Selena Sturmay of the host team is 3-0 after beating Team Canada’s Kerri Einarson on Sunday afternoon.

Skylar Ackerman was 3-0 until her Saskatchewan team ran into Quebec on Monday morning. Laurie St-Georges took four in the sixth end and won the game 7-3. Amazingly, this marked the third time Ackerman had dropped a four-banger—and she won both previous games.

In other Monday morning games, Manitoba’s Kaitlyn Lawes improved to 1-2 by beating Newfoundland and Labrador’s Stacie Curtis (0-3) by an 8-3 score; Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville is now 2-2 after a 9-5 win over PEI’s Jane DiCarlo, and Einarson took out BC’s Corryn Brown (2-2) 9-8 in an extra end.

In the other pool, Manitobans Jennifer Jones (3-0) and Kate Cameron (2-0) lead the pack along with Ontario’s Rachel Homan (2-0) while BC’s Clancy Grandy is at 2-1.

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On the opening Saturday of the Scotties, an incredible thing happened. A group called the Women In Curling Leader’s Circle, chaired by Elaine Dagg-Jackson, hosted an event for past Alberta provincial champions (or “legends” as they called us). We were asked to bring an Alberta jacket for a photo op.

When I walked into the room, I honestly didn’t know what to expect. What transpired was a fantastic celebration of female Alberta curlers but more importantly, I recalled something that I’m so thankful for as a woman in sport: the curlers are lucky.

Is everything perfect? Definitely not. Are we fully equal? Not quite. But we are closer to equality in curling than most sports could dream of being right now.

We have equal prize money and equal television coverage for the Brier and the Scotties (the Grand Slam of Curling insisted on equal pay for the men’s and women’s events years ago, which set a precedent for Curling Canada).

We’ve all seen the press about Canada Soccer, where our women are the reigning Olympic gold medallists and yet they remain painfully underfunded and mistreated.

Watching the new Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) absolutely slay the ratings and attendance (and everything else) has been incredible.

It’s a very front-of-mind issue at the moment, and in many ways, curling has been ahead of the curve in this sense, even before the Women in Curling Leader’s Circle existed. And based on the existence of this committee, curling is only going to continue to move in the right direction when it comes to the women’s game (even if we are still occasionally told we should “smile more”).

I’ve heard the argument, made many times, that women’s sports wouldn’t draw the same crowds or viewership that men’s sports do—which is why they aren’t on television or hosted in big arenas.

In curling, the women were given the chance. We were given the opportunity of equal TV coverage and arenas hosting events, and guess what? It worked.

The Scotties ratings are as typically as good (if not better) than the Brier ratings. Even the attendance these days is reasonably similar.

This venue had a sellout yesterday, and we’re nowhere near the final weekend.

When given equal opportunity, women’s sports are coming through in spades, and I, for one, am very proud to be part of one of the first sports to give women an equal shot.

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Is anyone else feeling a sense of “here we go again” when it comes to controversy around the handle sensor issues?

Let’s start with this: I have no sympathy for anyone not releasing the rock before the hogline. We’ve all known where it is our entire curling lives. It hasn’t moved. There is no reason to not let the rock go in time.

That being said, we play plenty of events without sensors, including the entire Grand Slam of Curling series, and there is very seldom an issue. I’ve seen teams make a comment or get into a bit of an argument here and there over someone going over, but these incidents are few and far between. 

It also has to be pretty egregious before it really bothers most of the top teams and players … if you’re an inch over the line, let’s be honest, it isn’t making or breaking the result of that throw.

If the handles worked reliably, I’d be all for them, as evidenced by my first statement here. However, given all the issues over recent years, it seems to me they cause far more problems than they solve. In the first two days alone we saw a number of rocks wrongly removed—six in total—and it has affected the outcome of games. Teams have been penalized when they did not violate the hogline rule, and that’s not acceptable.

So here we are—the sensors have now been turned off for the rest of the tournament.

Much has been made about a switch in suppliers and that certainly did seem to make the issue worse, but there have been historical challenges with the handles before that era. If you were to poll anyone who has played in a few events with sensor handles, they are likely to have a story of some kind.

I have a story, of course. Amy Nixon had a stone pulled, wrongly, at the world championship in 2016. I don’t think Amy ever came close to a hogline in her life but sure enough, the light blinked red and the officials pulled the stone. 

The test they ran afterward said the handle did its job but as the Curling Canada YouTube video shows, it clearly did not.

There was no arena jumbotron in Swift Current, Sask. and during pre-game practice we had complained about that handle—they tested it then, too, and told us it was working properly.

I ended up having to make a ridiculous run double to score one, and we could’ve easily given up a steal of three.

Either something needs to change that makes the handles more reliable (whether that’s a supplier issue, new technology etc.) or we need to decide—when do we say “enough is enough?”