So, it’s that time of year again, where I take off a couple of weeks and take the first week, at least, to watch some curling on TV. Every four years I end up taking the entire two weeks and watch some other sports as well since that’s when the Winter Olympics are on, but outside of that I just take the first week and watch the Scotties, the Canadian Women’s Championships. This time it was out in British Columbia which means that I couldn’t watch the late draws as they started after I typically went to sleep, which also meant that I couldn’t watch the final either.
There was actually some controversy to start the event, which swirled around issues with pregnancy. As this is the start of the four year cycle building up to the Olympics a lot of the women decided that if you’re going to start to add to your family this was really the best time to do so, and so a number of teams had members who were pregnant or had just given birth and so might have had some physical issues in playing, and so their teams might need a replacement player. The governing body had a rule that I think only the top 5 teams by rankings could break the residency rule and have more than one player from outside of the province, and so bring in an import to replace a pregnant player. This meant that Kaitlyn Lawes’ team could replace Selena Njegovan with Laura Walker, but in theory if they needed to a team like Casey Scheidegger’s couldn’t have, despite both the skip and her sister being pregnant. This caused an uproar, and ultimately the governing body changed the rule.
Now, for me the interesting thing about this was, well, the uproar, because it was all based on what we normally see these days, with discussions over equity and the like. But the governing body didn’t do this just because, so they had reasons to do this, reasons that were mentioned but glossed over to tie into the equity angle. The reason, as I understand it, was that they felt that for the top teams that would normally finish high enough to get the funding it would be too onerous for them to be restricted to their own province to find their temporary replacement, and so they’d have to take someone that doesn’t play to their level, which would unfairly impact their chances at winning. For teams below the funding level, there was an implication that there was a risk that they’d use the situation to bring in a better player and so artificially boost their chances, while it would be relatively easy for them to find a player that would be able to play at their level. So, for fairness, the top five teams that would get funding would get the optimal chance to fill in with a player of equal quality, while at the same time no team outside of that would be able to take advantage of the rules to pick up a player of higher quality.
So in my opinion, the whole concerns about equity were a complete red herring. What should have been focused on was the reasons for the rules and whether fairness dictated that they make the rule. In my opinion, I can see that the rules are not simply arbitrary as implied, and so it wasn’t obvious that the rule should have been expanded. That being said, I don’t see the need for the rule to enforce fairness, and can see a reason why teams lower in the rankings might want to pick up a player from another province. What you want in a replacement player is less one that’s really, really good, but more one that you know well and can fit well into your team. While you’ll take a really good player for your team, ideally you want someone that you’ve played with before so that you know what sort of shots they’re good at and want to make, and where to put the broom for them, and how their release works, and so on and so forth. So a purportedly weaker team might want to bring in a player from out of province — even one of a higher perceived quality — not because they want to take advantage of bringing in a better player, but because they’ve played with them before or train with them or know them really well and know that they’re a good fit, and it’s unlikely that they’d simply want to bring in a supposed “ringer” because that person might not fit well with the rest of the team. So, in my opinion, the rule wasn’t needed and it was fine to drop it, but the arguments over equity and encouraging women curlers completely missed the point.
Okay, on to the curling. One thing that was very interesting this year was that there was a bit less of a gap among the provinces than we normally see, and one reason for this was that while perennial in-the-mix teams like Kerry Galusha and Suzanne Birt were still in the mix the younger teams really stepped it up this year. Yes, it was still the case that Einarson’s Team Canada, Jones’ Team Manitoba, and Homan’s Team Ontario were in the playoffs, and McCarville’s Team Northern Ontario maintained their recent status as being among the teams that could win, in one pool there were tiebreakers among new and younger teams, with Christina Black’s Team Nova Scotia and Clancy Grandy’s Team B.C. coming out on top over Lawes’ Team Wild Card 1 and Laurie St-Georges’ Team Quebec, all of which are younger and newer teams. Christina Black even topped Homan to make it into the actual playoffs, before being beaten. So what we’re seeing now, it seems to me, is the younger teams making things interesting, but it will be interesting to see if they can do so consistently or if they’ll be inconsistent as they try to take that next step.
Christina Black was, in fact, the story of the event, as the team itself was a bit inconsistent but she often made incredible shots to get them out of trouble and to a 5 – 3 record and into the playoffs, and she had to steal three straight wins to do so, and almost stole a fourth except for a great shot from McCarville. I found myself cheering for her for the same reason that I cheered for Laurie St-Georges when she made her debut — although Black was skipping last year, from what I heard — which is that both of them are very open and very enthusiastic. For example, Black had to play three games on Saturday, and after winning the second in an extra end she said “We could make 33!” which I didn’t understand until I realized that what had been cut off was that they could have ended up playing 33 ends in that one day. Laurie St-Georges seemed to tone things down slightly this time around — although I didn’t get to watch a game of hers and so only had the reactions from the updates — but Black was still enthusiastic for most of the time, and fairly open, commenting after the last game that she was so tired that she couldn’t see straight after that disappointing loss.
Which ties into why I dislike Jennifer Jones so much. A big part of it is for the same reason that I was disliking Kayla Skrlik’s team: they’re teams that I don’t have any particular reason to like, and they get a lot of attention and beat teams that I like better. For Jones, that’s a long standing dislike from her first Scotties win, and while I acknowledge that she’s a great curler I do tend to cheer against her unless she’s trying to win for Canada. But other reasons I dislike her is that she’s pretty aggressive in her calls, especially when she’s throwing her own stones, when the person in the rings is supposed to be making most of the calls and Jones is screaming instructions from the hack (which, to be fair, is something they are supposed to do but my understanding is that definitely by halfway down the sheet the person in the rings is supposed to be listened to). This is indeed what all the best skips do — and, yes, it annoys me about all of them, too — but this year Jones for some reason has taken over at skip for a young team and I end up wincing when she does that, since she’s probably on her last four year cycle and they are up-and-coming and I worry that they aren’t really learning what to do on their own when Jones takes over. But there’s another reason, which is a comparison with Black. What I noticed was that when Jones was making big shots she was celebrating quite a bit, but Black was making better shots and celebrating less than Jones, and when Black celebrated it was less her celebrating making a shot or taking advantage over her opponents, but instead more a celebration where she showed shock that she actually made that shot. I found myself using the standard comment that Jones really should act like she’s been there before, and I compared her to Rachel Homan who tends to celebrate far less. Then again, I’m not a Jones fan as I’ve already stated and so some of my impressions here might be biased.
Which leads me to the final, which pitted Einarson’s team against Jones’ team. Now, I was cheering against Einarson’s team this year even though I still do like the team and even though they were looking to get a historic fourth straight win which is something that I normally like to see. However, that’s precisely why I didn’t want them to win, and wanted someone else to finally beat them. In truth, I was hoping that McCarville’s team would win, as I felt that they were due. But when she didn’t make it to the final and it was Einarson vs Jones, well, I was all-in on Team Einarson. Either team winning would be historic, as as noted Einarson was going for four straight and Jones was going for seven total wins … and again all I wanted was for someone else to win. However, Einarson’s team won 10 – 4, taking 5 in the ninth to wrap it all up, which was indeed the better outcome for me.
So that’s it for the Scotties. The Briar is up next, which is the men’s championships and so I won’t watch it that closely and won’t comment on it, which is followed by the Worlds, and then it’s back to the Grand Slam.