We were scanning the various provincial Tour websites this morning, and something in Ontario caught our eye.
Early November’s Mount Lawn Gord Carroll Classic is named after local legend Gord Carroll, who was inducted into the local sports hall of fame last year. Curling dinosaurs (like us) may recall the first few years of print advertisements which announced the new sponsor of Ontario’s Nokia Cup provincial back in the day: the ad showed a dashing fellow wearing a poor boy hat sliding out of the hack without a broom, but with a mobile phone held up to his ear. That was Gordie!
Anyway, this year’s event has 24 men’s and 12 women’s teams, plays a triple knockout and has a $30,000 prize purse.
The men’s champions get $7,000 but qualifying money is a hefty $2,000.
And all this for a $525 entry fee.
Then we discovered that all teams are all being chauffeured around town in limousines.
Hmmmm.
Something very good is happening in Whitby, which hosted the Ontario men’s provincial a few years ago. Right now the event attracts strong southern Ontario teams, but at this rate of growth perhaps the Gordie’s spiel is on its way to eventually attracting some big guns from out of town.
Curling dinosaurs (like us) may remember a major Whitby cashspiel years ago called the Sun Life. Paul Savage, Ed Werenich, Bob Charlebois, Jim Sharples and so many more made that event a regular stop in their annual Tour schedule.
They’re going back to the future in Whitby!
• There’s lots of competition this weekend on the various tours, but Manitoba is hosting two biggees; Ray Turnbull’s annual women’s Grand Slam stop in Winnipeg and the men’s WCT stop in Portage ...
• DID YOU KNOW: that Kerry Burtnyk’s imported third, Don Walchuk, has followed the Park/Stoughton script and is officially a Manitoban?
• They’re getting pumped in Swift Current, Sask. for an appearance by world champ Jennifer Jones ...
• Burtnyk was at yesterday’s news conference launching today’s early bird ticket sales for the January Grand Slam stop in Winnipeg, the BDO Classic Canadian Open ...
• Well, aren’t we darned. Youth sensation Rachel Homan did it again, winning in London for the second year in a row, this time with a final-game victory over world silver medallist Bingyu Wang of China ...
• Wayne Middaugh and Glenn Howard stopped by four Kitchener-Waterloo area curling clubs yesterday to promote the first Capital One Grand Slam: the Masters of Curling, which hits that area in mid-November. Here’s a peek at Howard’s appearance in Elmira, and here’s a peek at Middaugh’s bizarre headgear in Guelph ...
• Hey, nice new look for the Charlottetown CC ...
• By the way, does your club have real hogs at the lines?
• The 2010 Canadian Juniors are off to Quebec ...
• DID YOU KNOW II: that the Gibsons Curling Club in B.C. is offering a $1,000 bursary for a 2009 high school graduate interested in learning the ice making ropes?
• Actually, curling isn’t just for Italian nerds... we welcome nerds of all nationalities ;) ...
• Speaking of Italy, here's not one but two Italian wheelchair curling stories ...
• We agree: this curling joke is Impressively Unimpressive ...
• A different Becker will make his world curling debut for New Zealand in April ...
C’est un bon début pour L’equipe Belisle ...
• Today’s U.S. curling spotlights are on South Plainfield in New Jersey, and in Pittsburgh, and also in Boston, where they just started up last Monday ...
• Happy 70th anniversary to Scotland’s Falkirk ladies ...
• 2006 Paralympic wheelchair gold medallist Sonja Gaudet is one of three athletes profiled in a new Vancouver 2010 campaign involving vehicle license plates ...
• Speaking of Savage and The Wrench, it looks like most of the old 1983 world champion team are supporting Ontario’s 2009 provincial Tankard. Notice the golf shoes and gloves, however ...
• Here’s a thoroughly strange curling featurette, in Danish ...
• Here’s our curling team website of the week: Team Niklas Edin of Sweden ...
• Sick of all those sick zombie curling blogposts? Well, we’re not: Renerd has reviewed the film Deadspiel right here ...
• We’re not sure this fellow is supporting curling as much as he is dissing NASCAR racing ...
• Now on to the bad news: Northern Ontario’s Rainy River Curling Club is in trouble, with the town looking to help out, but things sound gloomy. Today, Friday, is doomsday ...
• Finally, club manager Ellery Robichaud of Curling Beausejour in Moncton says it best in this CCA Business of Curling blogpost:
Our number one secret is we changed what we were selling before. We stopped doing things the same way we did them before. With that philosophy you only get the people you’ve already got. If you only ask your members what they want, you’ll get what you’ve already got. But if you want new people, you have to ask people who aren’t curling why they aren’t curling.
We had to change the product. Curling clubs that want to sell the same thing they sold in the ’70s just won’t be successful.
Early November’s Mount Lawn Gord Carroll Classic is named after local legend Gord Carroll, who was inducted into the local sports hall of fame last year. Curling dinosaurs (like us) may recall the first few years of print advertisements which announced the new sponsor of Ontario’s Nokia Cup provincial back in the day: the ad showed a dashing fellow wearing a poor boy hat sliding out of the hack without a broom, but with a mobile phone held up to his ear. That was Gordie!
Anyway, this year’s event has 24 men’s and 12 women’s teams, plays a triple knockout and has a $30,000 prize purse.
The men’s champions get $7,000 but qualifying money is a hefty $2,000.
And all this for a $525 entry fee.
Then we discovered that all teams are all being chauffeured around town in limousines.
Hmmmm.
Something very good is happening in Whitby, which hosted the Ontario men’s provincial a few years ago. Right now the event attracts strong southern Ontario teams, but at this rate of growth perhaps the Gordie’s spiel is on its way to eventually attracting some big guns from out of town.
Curling dinosaurs (like us) may remember a major Whitby cashspiel years ago called the Sun Life. Paul Savage, Ed Werenich, Bob Charlebois, Jim Sharples and so many more made that event a regular stop in their annual Tour schedule.
They’re going back to the future in Whitby!
• There’s lots of competition this weekend on the various tours, but Manitoba is hosting two biggees; Ray Turnbull’s annual women’s Grand Slam stop in Winnipeg and the men’s WCT stop in Portage ...
• DID YOU KNOW: that Kerry Burtnyk’s imported third, Don Walchuk, has followed the Park/Stoughton script and is officially a Manitoban?
• They’re getting pumped in Swift Current, Sask. for an appearance by world champ Jennifer Jones ...
• Burtnyk was at yesterday’s news conference launching today’s early bird ticket sales for the January Grand Slam stop in Winnipeg, the BDO Classic Canadian Open ...
• Well, aren’t we darned. Youth sensation Rachel Homan did it again, winning in London for the second year in a row, this time with a final-game victory over world silver medallist Bingyu Wang of China ...
• Wayne Middaugh and Glenn Howard stopped by four Kitchener-Waterloo area curling clubs yesterday to promote the first Capital One Grand Slam: the Masters of Curling, which hits that area in mid-November. Here’s a peek at Howard’s appearance in Elmira, and here’s a peek at Middaugh’s bizarre headgear in Guelph ...
• Hey, nice new look for the Charlottetown CC ...
• By the way, does your club have real hogs at the lines?
• The 2010 Canadian Juniors are off to Quebec ...
• DID YOU KNOW II: that the Gibsons Curling Club in B.C. is offering a $1,000 bursary for a 2009 high school graduate interested in learning the ice making ropes?
• Actually, curling isn’t just for Italian nerds... we welcome nerds of all nationalities ;)
We had to change the product. Curling clubs that want to sell the same thing they sold in the ’70s just won’t be successful.
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