The Golden Hawks Curling High Performance Centre is looking to continue to improve the effectiveness of its service delivery to the performance-minded curling community. To reach that objective means that a wide variety of services will have to be made available to competitive teams and coaches on an ongoing basis. By anchoring your team out of the High Performance Centre, your team can benefit from the package of services and supports that are available. In 2012-2013, two anchor teams were Ontario champions, and another was runner-up!

Anticipated services and supports that teams would be able to take advantage of though the High Performance Centre include:

• Sport Psychology
• Nutrition
• Team Dynamics
• On-ice video analysis
• Technical advice
• Access to HPC on-ice equipment (lasers/split timing system, etc.)
• Off-ice conditioning programs (pre-season and during the season)
• Quick access to Athletic Injury assessment and subsequent direction/advice
• Access to HPC meeting rooms
• Several fee options
• And more….

Some of these services will be available on an ongoing basis and may or may not involve additional fees. Other services will be available in a clinic session format only. Teams in the program would attend clinics with no additional fees.

Anchor teams, including their respective coaches that are accepted into the Centre, may desire access to only those areas of support that they feel are beneficial to them. Should a team not have a coach for the upcoming season and want one, the Centre will attempt to find an appropriately-certified coach for your team. Being registered at the Centre will not restrict you from competing in other zones. Your team may decide to represent another club in another zone for a particular event; Centre-based teams are free to make that choice.

As the number of Centre-based teams increase, the individual team sessions that were used in the initial year of operation can be expected to decline as ice time and manpower will be dedicated to those teams based out of the Centre.

Unfortunately, manpower, equipment and facility restrictions will limit the number of teams the Centre can accommodate. We are looking for approximately four teams (dependent on the degree of anticipated access needed by these teams) in the bantam, junior or adult age categories to compliment the four Wilfrid Laurier teams that are in the program.

Interested teams should email your team’s resume to gcross@golden.net. The application deadline is April 30th, 2013.

The Golden Hawks Curling High Performance Centre was pleased to host the second “Podium Project” at the Kitchener Waterloo Granite Club on March 29th and 30th. Fully funded by “Own the Podium”, the Podium Project is directed at Ontario’s Bantam age curlers and is intended to begin the process of both identifying and tracking the best young curlers in Ontario. This year the camp expanded from one day to one and a half days and included a larger developmental component which complimented the testing procedures that were first implemented last year. This year’s camp included 32 curlers and 8 team coaches.

National Team Coach Jim Waite took the lead role in organizing the weekend. Anyone who has dealt with any Jim Waite project knows that every aspect of the project will be organized, every minute valuable. The 2013 Podium Project was no exception.

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The camp was highlighted by guest speaker Kaitlyn Lawes, third for Manitoba’s Team Jennifer Jones. Kaitlyn shared her road to success with the curlers and their coaches, emphasizing the important role losses can play in your development if you use them as a tool from which to learn. Kaitlyn also spoke of the commitment required for success, and the rewards she has experienced as a result. Engaging as always, Kaitlyn provided the motivational impetus that the organizers were hoping for.

Athletes were exposed to numerous numerous elements related to their development including sport psychology, fitness, the long term athlete development model (LTAD) and, of course, Kaitlyn’s presentations as well as the on- and off-ice testing protocols. Three coaching-specific sessions were also offered to the eight team coaches covering a variety of areas, which ranged from team organization to doping control to the unique challenges Ontario and, by extension, Canada faces as the sport of curling continues to develop rapidly. This rapid development is a result of the growth in the international interest of curling since it gained full medal status at the Olympic Games in 1998.

The Golden Hawks High Performance Centre is in the process of developing a Smart Broom through a partnership with Conestoga College. The first prototype was available for use at the camp and was very successful in gathering sweeping data from each of the athletes. This additional data will augment the shooting and physical fitness data that was already collected. Plans for the Smart Broom to collect even more data are well underway.

Ontario has embraced the Podium Project initiative as an integral part of advancing the sport so that Canada can remain as the international leader in the game.

Many thanks to all the staff who helped make this year’s Podium Project a success:

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The Golden Hawks High Performance Centre is pleased to announce the appointment of Marc Bernard as a member of the HPC team.

In addition to his status as a Certified Competition Coach in curling, and as a Junior coach at the Elmira and District Curling Club, Marc is a software specialist at AGFA Healthcare in Waterloo, Ontario and is a graduate of Conestoga College’s Computer Programmer/Analyst program. Marc’s initial work with the HPC will be in software development, associated with an ongoing engineering project being developed at Conestoga College on behalf of the HPC. In his role, Marc will advise the project team using his expertise in user-interface design, Java, and Android and Blackberry development.

We look forward to Marc’s contributions as the High Performance Centre continues to evolve.

Welcome, Marc!

With the close of the 2013 OUA Curling Championships, hosted by Wilfrid Laurier University at the Guelph Curling Club, three women’s and three men’s teams are off to Kamloops, British Columbia for the 2013 Canadian University Curling Championships to be held March 20-24 at the Kamloops Curling Club.

Both of the women’s teams from McMaster and Guelph are currently fundraising for the trip to Kamloops, as both of these teams are self-funded and are able to draw upon limited support from their home university athletics programs. Donations to the Guelph Gryphon women’s team can be made through Guelph’s Adopt-a-Gryphon program, while donations to the McMaster women’s team can be done online through the McMaster Alumni Association and specifying “Women’s Curling” as the target for your contribution. Contributions to either team are tax deductible.

These women’s teams are very deserving of your support, and I encourage readers to donate to these teams to cover a portion of their travel costs to and from Kamloops, which will be considerable.

OUA Teams at the 2013 CIS Championships

The participants from Ontario at the 2013 CIS Championships are:

• Women’s teams
  • Western University, 2013 OUA Champions: skip Caitlin Romain, third Jackie Rivington, second Chantal Allan, lead Nicole Westlund, and alternate Stephanie Thompson. Coach is Rory Munro.
  • McMaster University, 2013 OUA Runners-up: skip Ginger Coyle, third Rachelle Vink, second Laura Brown, and lead Robyn Murphy. Coach is Chris Malcolmson, OUA Women’s Coach of the Year for 2013.
  • University of Guelph, 2013 OUA Bronze medalists. Skip Jaimee Gardner, third Katelyn Wasylkiw, second Heather Cridland, lead Erin Jenkins, and alternate Emilie Metcalfe. Coached by Jason Rice.
• Men’s teams
  • University of Waterloo, 2013 OUA Champions: skip Jake Walker, third Ed Cyr, second Jordan Moreau, lead James Freeman, and alternate Nathan Ransom. Coached by Scott Allen.
  • Trent University, 2013 OUA runner’s up: skip Michael Bryson, third Adam Gagne, second Jason Whitehill, lead Mike Kean, and alternate Chris Whitehill. Coached by OUA Men’s Coach of the Year Brad Kidd.
  • Carleton University, 2013 OUA bronze medalists: skip Brett Lyon-Hatcher, third Ben Miskew, second Greg Bridges, lead Cole Lyon-Hatcher, and alternates Ryan McCrady and Chris Lewis. Coached by Art Miskew.

The 2013 OUA Curling Championships, hosted by Wilfrid Laurier University, were completed yesterday at the Guelph Curling Club with the finals held at 3:30pm. Emerging as the women’s champions were the Western Mustangs, skipped by Ontario Junior runner-up Caitlin Romain, while the men’s champions were the Waterloo Warriors skipped by former national champion Jake Walker.

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In this post I will recap the women’s final match between Western and McMaster, along with summaries of the other three games that were played to decide the Ontario representatives to the CIS Championships that will be held in Kamloops, BC next month and hosted by Thompson Rivers University.

Women’s gold medal game: Western versus McMaster

After their win over the Carleton Ravens in the semi-final, the Western Mustangs looked to continue their consistent play and take advantage of the excellent shooting made by third Jackie Rivington and skip Caitlin Romain in their win over the Ravens. Like Western and Brock, the McMaster foursome, skipped by Ginger Coyle, had also finished the round-robin with a 5-1 record in Pool B. However, Western was granted first-place on the basis of their better draw-to-the-button average over all round-robin games.

The girls from Steeltown defeated Brock 8-2 in their tie-breaker on Sunday night, which led to their semi-final game against Guelph, where they handed the Gryphons a 6-3 defeat and so had only a single blemish on an otherwise perfect record coming into Monday afternoon’s final.

The first end featured a classic first-end blank strategy by Western skip Caitlin Romain, who hit and rolled out with her final stone to retain hammer in two.

In end two, left-handed Marauder skip Ginger Coyle asked lead Robyn Murphy for a centre-line guard, and Romain responds asking lead and PhD student Nicole Westlund to draw around; but Nicole’s stone is deep and sits back-12. Robyn Murphy of McMaster then draws back-4-foot; Westlund tries to hit with hack weight and removes the McMaster stone but rolls off, and again Robyn plays the come-around to lie 2. Western’s Chantal Allan attempts the same shot as her lead Westlund, but she is light and rolls off shot stone leaving McMaster lying 2. McMaster second Laura Brown then plays a guard, and Western skip Caitlin Romain calls for her second, Allan, to make a double peel, which she completes but leaves her shooter on the centre line. McMaster third Rachelle Vink again plays a come-around but she is also heavy and lies back-4-foot.

With McMaster in the rings, Western third Jackie Rivington plays an out-turn tap-back to sit back-button and lie 2nd shot. Vink responds with a delicate come-around to tap her own stone and corner freeze. After an exchange of third stones, with her first McMaster skip Ginger Coyne attempts a guard but is heavy and taps her own at an angle (see diagram at right – McMaster is yellow).

Ginger’s shot leaves Romain a delicate in-turn hack-weight takeout to double off the two McMaster stones in the four foot, which she makes successfully. With her final stone, Coyne tries to hit and roll off one of the Western stones but her rock over-curls, jamming against a guard and leaving Romain with 2 stones in the back four-foot and a draw for 3. Caitlin makes no mistake and her front end Westlund and Allan brush the stone precisely to the pin, giving the Western women a 3-0 lead after 2 ends of play and control of the game, which they would never relinquish.

With the three-point lead, in end three McMaster’s Ginger Coyne ignores Nicole Westlund’s opening draw to the top-four-foot and calls on lead Robyn Murphy to put up a corner guard. Westlund responds with a centre guard on shot stone, and Coyne plays a come-around around the corner guard to the tee-line in the 8-foot. McMaster second Laura Brown replaces the guard after it is peeled by Western’s Chantal Allan, and the two players exchange similar shots again. However, McMaster third Rachelle Vink’s first attempt to replace the guard fails to put it in exactly the right spot, leaving Western third Jackie Rivington an in-turn hit to sit 2. Vink replies with a peel of her own, leaving Western still lying two but open, and with McMaster still having a corner guard.

With Western skip Caitlin Romain putting up another centre line guard, Coyle plays the draw around the Western stone and lies 2nd shot with 2 stones to play. Romain tries to respond with a come-around of her own, but her shot rubs the guard leaving Western still lying one, buried. Coyle has a wide in-turn come-around to the 4-foot but is just light, and gives up a steal of one. 4-0 Western after three.

In the fourth end of play, Western starts playing defensively, placing two stones in the rings and then hitting everything thereafter. At 3rd stones, Western lies two, with McMaster having a stone top-12 on center and a corner guard. Rivington peels the corner, which Vink replaces. With her second stone, Rivington attempts a double-peel that hits the guard straight back. With her last stone, McMaster third Vink attempts a come-around the Western stone on center line, but instead of top-four her stone is deep and lies third shot. Being behind the tee line, Romain draws top-four-foot with backing behind the tee line on either side of the stone.

With her final stone (see diagram at right; McMaster is yellow) Ginger Coyne attempts a difficult double-and-roll to carom off of a Western stone at the edge of the four and somehow move the other Western stones without knocking her own stone out of the four-foot. Doing it perfectly would yield a deuce, but Ginger nose hits, resulting in a single point and a 4-1 Western lead at the break.

The fifth end did not start well for the McMaster foursome, who needed perfect execution to reel the Western women in with a steal. Western’s Nicole Westlund placed her two lead stones in the rings and Coyne deliberately ignored them. Unfortunately, McMaster lead Robyn Murphy was heavy with her second stone permitting Chantal Allan to peel it out. McMaster second Laura Brown compounded the error by hogging her first guard attempt, and Chantal Allan made no mistake in clearing the front of the rings completely.

At third stones, McMaster’s Rachelle Vink places two centre guards, each of which are promptly removed by Western’s Jackie Rivington. With Coyne’s first, she tries to freeze to one of Western’s stones in the rings, but is light. Romain attempts a hit but she under-throws it and the stone over-curls, merely nudging Ginger’s stone at an angle and possibly to lie shot at the edge of the four-foot. Coyne tries another draw to the four-foot but her stone is open. Western hits the open stone for one, and a close measure yields a second point. Western is now leading 6-1 after 5 ends of play.

Western continued the defensive play in six, again with lead Nicole Westlund placing both her stones in the rings and McMaster placing corner guards. A draw attempt by McMaster second Laura Brown is light, leaving Western a hit-and-roll to lie 3 with 2 buried. Vink and Rivington exchange hits, but with Vink’s second stone she makes a lovely hit-and-roll to lie shot on the pin. With Romain’s first of skip stones, she attempts an angle-raise tap-back but is light, leaving a wall of red stones top-12 but with McMaster still lying one on the button. Ginger Coyne’s attempt to lie 2 is heavy and goes out the back. Romain again tries an angle-tap-back but this time her stone doesn’t curl enough and rolls away, leaving Coyle a delicate draw through a port to the four-foot for a deuce. However, Coyle’s final stone crashes on a guard and she has to accept just a single point. 6-2 Western after six.

In end seven, Coyle has lead Robyn Murphy place a centre-line guard but Caitlin Romain has lead Nicole Westlund play a come-around to lie top-four. After another McMaster guard, Westlund tries another come-around to lie two but racks on a front stone. McMaster second Laura Brown, with her first come-around attempt, is light. Western second Chantal Allan has a chance to peel but misses the broom, and wicks a guard over to centre further cluttering the front of the rings. Brown draws four-foot with her second stone of the end, and Chantal Allan follows up with a peel.

With her first of third stones, Rachelle Vink freezes to Brown’s stone to lie two. Jackie Rivington of Western hits, leaving Vink’s stone and rolling off to one side. So doing leaves McMaster skip Ginger Coyle a chance to draw the button but she is just light, permitting Romain to play an angle-raise double-takeout to lie two herself, one fully buried. With her last stone of the end, Ginger attempts a hit-and-roll on 2nd shot but only manages a nose hit. With Western lying one, Romain draws four-foot on the other side of the house for her second point, and with that McMaster conceded, an 8-2 win for Western in 7 ends.

The Western foursome were in control of the game once they scored the three in end two and never looked back, with solid play and effective scoreboard management. With the loss, the McMaster girls finish the OUA tournament with a silver medal, but more importantly their top-three finish permits them a spot in the CIS Championships in Kamloops next month – an admirable result for a team who formed their own curling program at the beginning of the season.

Women’s bronze medal game: Carleton versus Guelph

In the women’s bronze medal game the Guelph Gryphons had something to prove to avenge their loss to McMaster in the semi-final and they did not disappoint the hometown crowd as they shutout the Carleton Ravens 7-0 in four ends, the turning point being the huge steal of 4 points in end four. With the loss, Ontario Junior champion Jaime Sinclair failed to earn a berth to the CIS championships, while Guelph and their rink of skip Jaimee Gardner, third Katelyn Wasylkiw, second Heather Cridland, lead Erin Jenkins and alternate Emilie Metcalfe, along with coach Jason Rice, go on to represent Ontario as one of the three Ontario teams at the CIS championships.

Men’s final and bronze-medal games

The men’s final featured Waterloo against Trent, who after knocking off the favoured Golden Gaels from Queen’s were looking at possibly taking the championship. A tight game for the first four ends, Waterloo third Ed Cyr and skip Jake Walker made four wonderful shots that, after the smoke had cleared, gave Waterloo a five-spot and a commanding 6-2 lead. Permitting the Waterloo rink to play defence the rest of the way, Trent skip Michael Bryson was forced to concede in 8 when Walker ran him out of stones.

In the bronze-medal match, Carleton’s Brett Lyon-Hatcher looked to avenge the earlier loss to Waterloo and gain a spot in the CIS Championships. Queen’s Golden Gaels, with skip Jonathan Buek, third Wesley Forget, second Simon Barrick, lead Scott Chadwick and alternate Andrew Minty, along with coach Mackenzie Dixon, were also looking to avenge their earlier loss to Trent. This game was very tight, with Queen’s managing a steal in the 8th end to tie the score at 5 apiece. The extra end featured several rocks in the four foot and for his last stone, Carleton skip Lyon-Hatcher was forced to draw the button with backing and he executed it perfectly, yielding a 6-5 win and preventing the Queen’s University foursome from making the trip to Kamloops next month.