The challenges faced by competitive curling teams - why are there fewer members, particularly women, interested in playing?

I wanted to take a moment to elaborate on one comment/issue that the Whig printed as part of its Saturday, December 5 story - "Sweeping Success", and that is, that competitive curling is dwindling at the Royal Kingston.

Without a doubt, there are some very competitive teams still competing out of RKCC, and doing quite well at regional and provincial levels. You need just take a look in the lounge to witness the success our Master's Women program has achieved in last few years, 2 Ontario Provincial banners, including a runner-up in the Canadian event. And, we regularly send out teams to compete in the Men's, Senior Men's, Senior Women's, Mixed and Senior Mixed zone playdowns - very competitive teams with eyes on possible provincial berths.

What we are missing at the competitive level, are multiple club entries in these various sections and, perhaps more importantly, representation in the Ladies' Scottie playdowns. Why aren't there more teams trying to qualify out of our club, and where are the women's teams?

When thinking back to the Clergy Street days of RKCC when 12+ Men's teams, and multiple Women's teams, would compete for the right to represent their club at the zone level, there were obviously a larger number of curlers vying to compete for Provincial titles -more teams and players that truly felt that, with 4 curlers peaking at the right time, they could take a run at a banner. Now, the average club curler seems a little less anxious to throw their hat in the ring, given the likelihood of facing off against professional teams, teams curling full-time (many with sponsors), when they arrive at the zones, regionals and, certainly, the provincials and beyond. How did the skill gap between a very good club team and the full-time squads we all watch on TV, get so big - big enough for many teams to doubt they could win? Answer - time and money.

The success of curling on television has brought ever increasing corporate sponsorship to the sport, which has created bigger and more lucrative special interest spiels, where the best of the best can take home some serious prize money. To challenge for this money, teams must dedicate hours and hours of their week to practicing and playing (usually, with a fair amount of travel thrown in). This takes time that the club level curler, especially those with young families, just can't afford to schedule or sacrifice, and it takes money to take time off work and travel. Without time and money it is very difficult to achieve and maintain the high level of skill needed to be successful game after game at this level.

So, while the Royal Kingston is maintaining a healthy, overall membership, we are indeed seeing a dwindling interest in competitive play, which likely can be directly attributed to the time and money needed to compete against the best teams out there. While I believe our sport will adapt to this trend (Dominion Championships for instance - more on that in another blog), there is one issue that needs to be addressed soon, or it could have a more dramatic, long term effect ... RKCC, and Curling in general, needs more women curlers ... and soon!

The topic of increasing the number of women curling will be addressed in more depth, in a future blog ... please send me your thoughts and suggestions on the issue.

Good Curling!