But they are also a bit bad.
Apparently you can play games on them and this, so I am told, has led to
a generation of feckless wasters spending all of their time glued to a screen
playing computer games instead of getting out and doing things: things like tanner
ba’ kicking against a wall; golf; swimming; rugby; tennis; cycling and, yes,
curling.
Although we talk a great game and arguably, to the outside
world, our sport has never been healthier with medals galore and all of the reflected
glory they bring to armchair fans, the stark reality is that the numbers of
participants has fallen dramatically these past twenty years or so. I used to boast in the pub that Scotland was
the second biggest curling nation after Canada (where there is, of course,
absolutely hee-haw else to do in winter) with upwards of twenty-five thousand
participants (I had made the number up, but I was not that far away from the
truth of the matter). Well, it ain’t
twenty-five thousand participants now and nor are we the second biggest curling
nation any more. The USA, where for
years curling was somewhat in the doldrums, has perked up. Curling is a growth sport over the pond and
they have leapt ahead of us in terms of the membership of their national body
versus ours.
At this point, you will expect me to have a dig at the Royal
Club. I don’t think that would be
fair. The RCCC has been proactive in
their activities to develop the sport.
Think of all the initiatives that the Royal Club has come up with in the
past decade or so.
·
For the younger generation, there is the Curling’s
Cool programme, the annual summer camps and the revamped skills awards. The club has also taken an active role in
coordinating the universities curling programme and, for the past forty-odd
years has run the Scottish schools championship as well, of course, as the
Scottish Junior Championships.
·
For adults, there is the annual adult “camp”
(some camp – it was at the North-West Castle hotel in Stranraer!) and the
Virtual Clubs.
·
The club actively promotes disabled curling –
not just for wheelchair users, but also now for visually-impaired and deaf
curlers.
For further information on all of these initiatives, go to http://royalcaledoniancurlingclub.org/development/
and have a look at what is on offer. I would argue that, were it not for these initiatives, the
sport might well be in a far worse position than it is now.
The Mother Club’s job has not been helped by the closure of
a number of curling centres – places like Lochgoilhead, Forest Hills,
Pitlochry, Letham Grange, Brora and Gogar Park.
I admit that many of these venues were kind of built in the wrong place
and did not have a population hinterland large enough to sustain them. That is not true though of the likes of Gogar
in Edinburgh and Forest Hills just to the north of the Glasgow
conurbation. With the demise of each
rink, the sport quietly lost many a curler.
At the current leakage rate, we will be plum out of curlers
in about twenty-five years or so. OK –
so there is an element of hyperbole in the figures and someone once said
something about “lies, damned lies and statistics”, but you get the
picture. The trouble is that all of this
is happening over the long term. It’s a
bit like global warming; small changes every year that you don’t really notice
until you take stock and compare things to fifty years ago (or in Scottish
curling’s case, twenty years ago).
Perhaps most worryingly of all, to the likes of me at least, is the fact
that at the recent AGM, there was much talk about ten curlers not being allowed
to play in the Scottish Championship this coming year – important issue though
that is, especially to the ten curlers involved - but not a lot of talk about
the falling numbers playing our great sport!
At this point, let me introduce you to Logan Gray. No – not that one; not the competitive curler
Logan Gray with the loud trousers on the telly.
The one I want to introduce you to is a bit more thoughtful and
contemplative. He is the one who cares
deeply about the future of his sport and is currently employed as the Ice
Sports Development Officer in Stirling.
He is perhaps less well-known, but I would argue that he is the more
important of the two – certainly when it comes to the good of the sport and its
future.
Logan was telling me about a couple of initiatives that he
has introduced up in Stirling in which he is trying to enlist the support of
the various clubs to back up his development programme. Let him take up the story:
What I’m doing is
asking the clubs to get their members to go out and find people to come to
TryCurling sessions. Once the members have found these new recruits they
should accompany them to the session as a familiar face for support and also to
socialise with them. It should make the new and very alien environment a little
less daunting for the new curler! The attraction to curling for the
masses is the sociability of the sport and if you don’t know anyone it isn’t
going to be very sociable at first…
The role the club has
here is twofold. I’m offering them a day
and time suited to their club to maximise their opportunity to recruit but also
to retain new curlers in the long run. So they need to pick a date and time
that suits their club and members. Secondly they need to motivate their members
to get out there and find people. We
need to be more proactive and by having one session (per season) on a date
tailored to a club, the whole membership can focus on it and all push to get
people signed up. It’s a more focused
approach and once the date has passed the obligation is gone until next
season.
I think all clubs
serious about their future should consider having a recruitment officer, as you
mentioned, to carry out this role as when I speak to clubs and ask what they
need help with. Every single club says “we need more members”. This is very
different to clubs being represented at TryCurling sessions – they need to go
out and find people to attend the sessions.
We need to play to our
sport’s strengths and for me… that is acknowledging that people who curl are
not randoms who come in off the street (Olympic fever aside). People do not wake up in the morning and have
an overwhelming urge to try curling. A
huge majority of people who currently curl have been brought into the sport by
people they know who have targeted their friends, family, neighbours,
colleagues, so curlers need to take responsibility for the future of our
sport. Curling clubs are lucky that they
have a fantastic resource available to them in most ice rinks where the
facility / development group/development officer / curling school arranges
coaching opportunities for new curlers, unlike clubs in other sports who have
to provide this for themselves to enable them to grow. I’ve spent a lot of time with clubs over the
last 6 months meeting them to explain that this resource exists for their use
and encouraging them to use it more.
Don’t bring people in off the street and toss them straight into a
league. Clubs will have a better chance
of retaining these new curlers if they have had a proper introduction to the
sport from qualified coaches and learning alongside other novices.
Essentially what
should happen is this. The clubs
actively recruit new people, book them onto our TryCurling sessions, the new
curler advances through the new curler pathway by going to beginner classes then
virtual club and within a year, Bob’s your uncle – the club is rewarded for
their efforts and has a new member, with no financial cost to the club, just a
little effort annually from their members to try and find one person to enrol
for a TryCurling class.
Logan’s work is bearing fruit and this year more than three
times the number of curlers have come through the TryCurling programme than
last.
So, in conclusion, I think we need to have a care. Our sport – in common with others, let it be
said – is going through something of a crisis at grassroots level. We have a particularly interesting year
coming up with the Olympics and we have a chance to use them as a springboard
to introduce new curlers to the sport. Link
that with the kind of initiative that Logan is introducing in the Stirling area
and we have a chance to grow our sport again.
Our clubs, maybe with a recruitment officer in place, need to get
together with their local development officers so that there is a connect
between their development activities and active recruitment of new
curlers. Finally, and let this be
shouted from the rooftops, every rink should have “come and try” days from
February onwards, to build on the interest that two Olympic Gold medals will
engender!
No pressure on the Olympians, then!
No pressure on the Olympians, then!
