Bits and pieces for the weekend

The curling season is moving towards its close, but I still have one date in my diary, an event I'm looking forward to. It's on Sunday, when the Kinross Curling School is holding a party to celebrate its tenth anniversary. The school was officially started in February 2001.

I asked Ena Stevenson what she remembered from ten years ago. She says, "I started the school up in 2000 with the help of a small committee, who all were coaching at Kinross. I felt at the time we were all doing our own thing and with a structured programme in place, things could be a lot better. After a lot of persuasion and arm twisting by myself and Steven (Kerr) a committee was formed with myself as Chair, the late Andy Souter as Vice, Jan King as Secretary, John Swan as Press Secretary, Steven Kerr the Ice Rink Manager, the remainder being Morag Wellman, Lora Finlay, and Shane Johnston.

I wanted to have a mixed age group to encourage all types of people to be interested. Jan, having worked with sportscotland, did a brilliant job in getting funding to set us up, and with a variety of ideas, passion and aims we invited club members along to an open evening to witness our specially prepared presentation.

I am proud to say that it has gone from strength to strength, and when I retired last September, we had thirty-two coaches, ongoing courses for adults and juniors, a very healthy junior club and, believe it or not, some clubs were beginning to listen to us and work alongside the school!"

David Jones the new CDO at Kinross is keeping things going with lots of new ideas.

All about Sunday's fun on and off the ice can be read about here. Money raised will go to local charities so if you are in the area do look in to the Kinross rink at the Green Hotel. Kick off time is 2.00 pm.

Just a couple of other things that have crossed my desk:

Firstly, there's an amazing little video here from the recent Capital One World Women's Curling Championship at the Granly hockey arena in Esbjerg (or click on the image above to take you to the page - the video's at the bottom). It's worth a couple of minutes of your time. VERY clever.

And following the success of the Anette Norberg team at the Worlds in Esbjerg, I hear that our Canadian friends have been studying old videos (from 2007) of Sweden's training methods to see how that country's curlers got the advantage. You may already have seen these but you can watch them again, see here. (Actually I think that En Liten Bit Av Polen were robbed in the final!)

Enjoy!