One of the big NWT youth events of the curling season will not happen this year.
The Rock the Rings Youth Bonspiel, which was slated to take place at the Yellowknife Curling Centre in late February, has been cancelled due to a lack of players. Specifically, the Inuvik Curling Centre wouldn’t be able to send its players due to a lack of playing time.
The announcement was made on the NWT Curling Facebook page this past Friday.
Nick Saturnino, NWT Curling’s president, said on Tuesday that the players who would have made the trip from Inuvik simply haven’t had enough time on the ice this season.
“In a typical season, they’ll do technical work and practice in November and December and start playing games after Christmas,” he said. “They haven’t been on the ice a lot this season and most of them have played, at the most, half a game. We felt the kids just weren’t prepared to go and play so we informed the folks in Yellowknife that Inuvik wouldn’t be making the trip.”
Inuvik’s contribution to this year’s event would have been around 30 players with 10 chaperones, said Saturnino. That would have accounted for close to half of the entries.
“The extension of the health regulation until Jan. 30 also caused us to delay things and was another factor,” he said.
In place of Rock the Rings this season, Saturnino said there are plans to have a junior curling day in March with all clubs in the NWT taking part in some fashion.
“We’re looking to do a full-day youth event of some kind and possibly do a Zoom session with all the clubs to bring them together that day,” he said. “Yellowknife and Inuvik have already indicated they’re in and hopefully, Hay River and Fort Smith will be able to join us. They’ve both struggled a bit with youth numbers this year.”
Two territorial events that are still going ahead, for now, are happening on the same weekend at the Yellowknife Curling Centre. The NWT Men’s Curling Championship will feature four teams battling in a double round-robin format for the right to represent the NWT at the Tim Hortons Brier in March in Lethbridge, Alta. Greg Skauge, the defending champion, has already entered, as has Jamie Koe and his rink. D’arcy Delorey of Hay River and Mason MacNeil of Inuvik round out the field.
All four teams will make the playoffs and they’ll be held under a Page playoff format. The first and second-place teams will play in one quarter-final with the third and fourth-place teams in the other. The winner of the one versus two game advances directly to the final while the loser will play the winner of the third versus fourth game in the semifinal; the loser of the third versus fourth contest is out. The winner of the semifinal moves on to play the one versus two winner for the Brier spot.
If the championship is cancelled, Saturnino said NWT Curling policy dictates that the declared winner will be the previous year’s champion, which comes with the first right of refusal for the Brier, similar to what happened with the NWT Women’s Curling Championship earlier this month.
Skauge and his rink would be in that position as they are the reigning champs from 2021.
The other event that weekend is the rescheduled U20 NWT Women’s Championship. That’s a best-of-five contest between Maggie Rogers of Yellowknife and Reese Wainman of Inuvik. The first team to win three games will earn the right to represent the NWT at the U20 Canadian Championships in Stratford, Ont., in late March.
Saturnino said if there needs to be another postponement — the original event was scheduled for Hay River before it was moved late last year — that can be accommodated.
“We have a bit of time to declare our representative for that,” he said.
Perhaps no national event has suffered from cancellations and postponement more than the Canadian U18 Curling Championships but there is new life for the thrice-postponed/cancelled bonspiel. Curling Canada announced earlier this month that Oakville, Ont., will play host to the 2022 edition in May. The original 2022 site was Timmins, Ont., but that was called off earlier this month due to the Omicron situation in Ontario.
“We feel confident that it will happen this time,” said Saturnino. “The member associations around the country told Curling Canada that the event is now a priority and the major restrictions should be lifted by that time to allow it to happen.”
That’s music to the ears of Tara Naugler, who will be coaching the boys entry out of the Yellowknife Curling Centre.
She said she’s hopeful they’ll finally be able to play.
“I’ve talked with the boys about things because they haven’t been on the ice in a while,” she said. “We’re trying to stay on top of things and we’re looking at heading down to play a spiel in the south in February so we can stay active.”
The only danger the team could run into is ice availability so late in the season. Naugler said that’s a conversation the team will have with the Yellowknife Curling Centre.
“We’ll work with the club to see if we can get some ice before it’s taken out,” she said. “If not, we’ll probably look at doing a side event of some sort on the way to Ontario so we can get some game play.”