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description=Hack to hack coverage of a very weird and fun sport. Click to read The Hand That Cradles The Rock, by Matt Sussman, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.;
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Text of the page (random words):
ame to my attention over the years that i am in the minority in that i think rules are fun and exciting apparently some of your wackos think they are just boring and complicated however i think some of you are just used to extremely unfun rules not here i run one clubspiel translation a bonspiel where only members can attend at the end of our season and it generally has been well attended it s low stakes high fun you get in a couple games with people from other leagues you have some sandwiches and everybody has a good time hard to mess up but can it be improved upon you bet first off with 10 20 teams involved in these things a standard bonspiel schedule is far too much especially when teams only play three games in two days so this format is basically a pointspiel meaning teams get partial credit for points scored and ends taken in addition to the win loss tie likewise margin of victory gets rewarded a little bit here s the format i use win 50 tie 20 loss 0 end scored 5 point scored 1 up to 8 points max to discourage massively lopsided games every team played three games over the weekend here s how the teams looked like after the first set of games team 1 7 team 2 68 team 3 71 team 4 78 team 5 83 team 6 24 team 7 19 team 8 13 team 9 12 team 10 7 team 11 78 team 12 78 team 13 82 team 14 13 so from the looks of it it appears that team 5 is leading the way followed by team 13 here s where it gets fun i merged these teams into four super teams or groups depending on the theme of the spiel i referred to the groupings something different one year our clubspiel was harry potter themed so there were four houses this year the theme was baseball so they were all put into four different leagues for the purposes of this explainer i m going to call them groups group a teams 1 4 224 group b teams 5 8 139 group c teams 9 11 97 1 group d teams 12 14 173 2 so it s not necessarily the goal to be the best team in the entire field but the goal is for your group to have more points than any other group this creates a slight bit of randomness but from an entertainment perspective this ensures that every team whether they won or lost their first game has an incentive to play their best because their performance can directly affect who wins the whole thing and in fact that s what happened in our clubspiel here were the standings with one set of games left group a 545 team 3 144 1 game left team 4 156 1 game left group b 340 group c 394 group d 592 team 13 242 points 0 games left the final matchups had teams 3 and 4 play games against group b and c with two winless teams from group b and d playing a match that meant every single game had meaning and readers let me tell you this was tense if i didn t have the groups this final draw was meaningless team 13 runs away with the thing but if teams 3 and 4 won their match and the other group d team couldn t win their game things were going to get messy team 4 was the first to finish things up taking a pretty lopsided loss meaning they were out of it and also further muddied which group was in front the other two games were one point affairs in the final end meaning team 13 was watching team 3 rooting for very specific outcomes as it turned out team 3 won while the group d team s game ended in a tie was it enough even i didn t know as i quietly tabulated the standings in front of the crowd of onlookers the final results group a 630 group b 403 group c 505 group d 637 so team 13 was crowned the champions by the narrowest of margins seven points equivalent to a two ender it is likely that if i continue to run this clubspiel that i will retain the same format and i am by no means squatting on this format if you have a members only spiel that needs some sprucing up by all means forward this to the event organizer they will in turn wow their club with all the rules and your members will come to enjoy the rules everyone wins 1 group 3 got a 33 percent point boost because they had one fewer team 2 so did group 4 share the drama of broomspringa competitive teams breaking up reforming and third parties breaking the news matt sussman mar 25 2022 2 share broomspringa n the period in the curling season after major championships which lasts through the summer in which curling teams break up and form new teams the concept that this newsletter is henceforth referring to as broomspringa has been called a few things most prominently the silly season and every four years the number of teams dissembling becomes even greater most elite teams are making change with the notable exceptions of teams skipped by krista mccarville kelsey rocque and glenn howard this concept is not unlike the hot stove league the nickname given to mlb s offseason and its steady stream of signings trades and retirements it s a fun side offering between seasons and broomspringa is no different so we all knew it was going to happen there s a whole tracker set up for it and the team dissolutions departures have already begun teams bottcher fleury koe scheidegger walker dunstone jones homan epping and horgan were among the notable teams to make announcements however many of the new lineups for teams gushue bottcher koe horgan and kaitlyn lawes were announced on kevin martin s inside curling podcast on sportsnet before the teams had a chance to announce them this obviously rubbed a lot of teams the wrong way gushue usually the first voice on such matters said he wasn t happy with how it all went down especially the insinuation that he was going to try and get residency rules changed so e j harnden could play second on his newfoundland based team i think we can have two things be true at the same time this is common practice for sports journalism the common practice kind of stinks for major sports teams so often the ken rosenthals and adrian wojnarowskis of the world have been reporting breaking news sports transactions like they re major scoops only for the teams to officially announce the deal hours or days later i never quite understood the purpose of this dynamic but the teams don t seem to care too much the information is almost never incorrect and the major concern is that the athletes wellbeing a lot of times they re finding out they ve been traded their coach was fired on twitter before the team gets a chance to tell them you could call the work environment unstable even toxic circling back to the curling teams it s unlikely a teammate is going to discover they re getting dumped from a team from someone else although we ve already drawn the line to podcasts leaking the news of teams so logically it could happen this is what we should prevent the primary difference between a curling team and a football team is there is owner the teams are player owned and player formed you can t decouple jennifer jones from team jennifer jones it ceases to exist growing professionalization of curling is a double edged sword these athletes want more exposure and more access to dollars through both sponsorship and prizes that s going to require more people getting involved to secure team stability from sponsors coaches marketing social media experts and so forth the net of curling professionals will widen and it s going to be harder to keep this information close to the vest with that in mind curlers and really anyone should expect to announce news on their own terms i d hate someone learning i formed a curling team before i made it public but i m not going to play the brier and there s more than a few reasons for that the elite players have however helped create a level of sports that generated a groundswell of excitement in the end podcasts and reporters may be a basic utility of this sport and as professional athletes they re either going to change the way they discuss their future learn who to trust or accept that their announcement will simply be part of the paradigm and while i m sure everyone wished kevin martin took his information and threw it away like it was a 10th end rock in a world championship final it s clear he had a trusted source when broomspringa picks back up in 2024 then in 2026 even more teams are going to break up reform and find that missing piece we re going to go through this a lot every time it happens someone will be involved in a team s lineup change and that someone may know a reporter teams might just have to factor this into the equation and lean into it that way when the news comes out we can be excited for the teams rather than wonder if we should also be angry at someone 2 share curling is the hardest olympic sport with evidence matt sussman feb 10 2022 1 2 share stefania constantini making it look easy nbc sports back in 2017 stefania constantini was an 18 year old second for team italy they were one game away from the olympics they lost to denmark 5 4 which included two burned rocks on skip stones that could have accounted for a potential three point swing it was a gut punch i wrote about it on the good deadspin at the time this time around in mixed doubles she made the game look incredibly easy becoming the first mixed doubles team to go undefeated at the olympics and the third team of any curling discipline since 1998 with nary a loss of course it is not easy all of us who have stepped onto the ice understand this but we know that it s the one winter olympic sport that anyone can try and have fun you don t hear much about learn to mogul ski classes because why so a lot of times you may see prompts about how curling is the easiest sport and how it s not a sport lewis black had a great bit about it nsfw start at about the 1 45 mark back in the year 2000 we didn t think much of it we were so naive so let s use 2000 as a starting point and pull some data using wikipedia a completely sound practice since 2000 there have been 53 winter olympians who also participated in the summer olympics here s the breakdown of the winter sport in which they participated bobsleigh 32 cross country skiing 7 speed skating 6 short track speed skating 2 alpine skiing 2 ice hockey 1 biathlon 1 freestyle skiing 1 snowboarding 1 skeleton 1 the current winter ones not on the list consist of figure skating luge nordic combined ski jumping and curling remember that this count includes winter athletes after 2000 prior that all winter sports had a summer olympian compete in them with the exception of one curling so by this highly specific but revealing metric curling is the hardest winter olympic sport it is a specialty sport though not many people try it let alone attempt it in a serious fashion the best example we have where it went beyond talk was the four retired nfl players yes they were all in their late 30s early 40s but they were fit as thick fiddles talked to the right people and could still beat the entire field in a game of flag football but the gridiron foursome did not come close to making a national championship let alone the trials and certainly not the olympics of the four jared allen pursued this to the completion of the quadrennial and played on a team that missed out on trials by three games so to back up here we re not saying it s impossible to be great at one sport then move to curling and be great at it too at the same time we simply haven t seen a bunch of elite athletes swarm the rinks and dominate it s not from a lack of access either most of the dual season athletes took to bobsled and there are less than 20 active sledding tracks in the world two in the usa for one the sport does require a fair amount of skill and the amount of skill to go from first time on the ice falling out of the hack to elite curler groovin double peels like it s nothing is probably 8 12 years that s a lot of time to dedicate to something where money is nonexistent until you become elite and rare is the olympic athlete who took this sport up in their 20s i m sure someone did but i m not aware of any and that s the allure it looks easy but it s not and yet it s not that hard that you can play it s the perfect sport the you can be an olympian too is simply a promotional hook come play the sport because it s fun as hell and you ll make 100 friends in a fortnight and some of them might be olympians 1 2 share your normie friend just tagged you in a curling gif now what grow the game matt sussman jan 17 2022 4 3 share with all the growth of the sport and our increasing knowledge of leagues competitive teams sweeping and how to pronounce bonspiel we forget that all this arcane knowledge is completely lost on normal folks who know curling is a sport and it has brooms and rocks and ice and that s about it therefore when they get into it and see those facebook memes scroll through the endless pixel hell you are relentlessly tagged kaitie kovach kaitiekov the winter olympics begin in less than a month and i m your friendly neighborhood curler reminding you that anyone you might know who is invested in curling has seen all of the swiffer and roomba videos already 12 14 am jan 6 2022 42 reposts 131 likes this is not cruelty this is a cry for help an opportunity to growthegame so the question is how do you respond reply to curling memes with the jeff stoughton highlight reel the jeff stoughton highlight reel of which there is a part 2 and part 3 contains some of the most canadian of television jam packed with doubles and runbacks to go with vintage sports cable coverage it is always wild to see bleachers filled with curling fans in the standard def era they ve been doing this for a while show them the rachel homan thin double this is quickly becoming just a post about shots that i really like and that s fine it s what you want to share it s what they want to see even if they don t know it the brevity of the highlight doesn t contain the vastness of what michelle englot and team manitoba did to rachel homan and team ontario beating them once in the round robin and once in the 1 2 game and while ontario had control most of the game manitoba was starting at their best possible chance against three but in 2017 you weren t going to score three on rachel homan it wasn t happening this thin double was proof of that the teamwork needed to make this shot was incredible and the reaction of homan s dad adds to the pleasantness show them the 2004 brier final one of the biggest comebacks in curling history nova scotia was down four points with three ends to play mark dacey s boys got a three a force and a 10th end for the ages with three perfect draws to sew up a 10 9 victory and stop randy ferbey from winning his fourth straight show them the kerri einarson chip for two an obligatory inclusion no explanation needed let s all watch it again this shot just freakin ruled show them the 2009 world championship final sometimes it s not all about shots sometimes it s the discussion once kevin martin said no hang on let s think about this for a second we were off to the races an entirely coordinated and logical discussion that resulted in him electing to waste his first skip stone it...