#playdowns

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Playing Down

MoPac and Washington are having their playdowns for Club Nationals this weekend. Team Zissou will not be there, but the Bond Girls will be to defend their back-to-back titles as MoPac Champs! Check out what Donna has to say about this years challenge. For results, The Granite Curling Club has got you covered. If Liza has time, she'll give us some updates via this very blog! Otherwise, she'll be tweeting along with the Bond Girls and some of the other curlers over the weekend. If you don't have a Twitter account yet, grandpa, you can follow the curlers in this handy little widget. Anyone I missed? Let me know and I'll add them! Good luck and good curling! new TWTR.Widget({ version: 2, type: 'list', rpp: 30, interval: 6000, title: 'live tweets from', subject: 'MoPac/WA Club Playdowns', width: 500, height: 300, theme: { shell: { background: '#383838', color: '#ffffff' }, tweets: { background: '#ffe3ff', color: '#444444', links: '#4056c2' } }, features: { scrollbar: true, loop: false, live: true, hashtags: true, timestamp: true, avatars: true, behavior: 'all' } }).render().setList('NoHoCurling', 'mopac-wa-playdowns').start();

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A Good Week

After being sick a couple weeks ago, things got better curling-wise, the last week. Beginning last Sunday, our usual league was dark for Halloween, so we decided to throw a costumed curling party under the disco lights usually reserved for free skating. You can check out all the photos here, but below is my winning luchador costume with the rest of the Halloween squad.

 We set up a mini-spiel, playing single ends against the other teams and rotating around. We lost by a point. Down by one, sitting three, Timmy came up and bumped a couple stones around, and rolled just closer to win the end, dashing our dreams of winning some Goldline Curling gift cards. Blast you, Tim! You're off the team.

He made up for it a couple days later, when Team Zissou took the ice in the first game of the Hollywood Curling Club Nationals playdowns. We're playing against three other teams this year, which is pretty nifty. We won 10-1 after 5 ends, making it an early night.

As the weekend approached, the Grey Power World Cup of Curling was getting underway, and The Curling News was pimping their Fantasy Pick 'em challenge. I figured I couldn't do much worse than my NFL picks this year, so I signed up. Lo and behold, I ended up tied for 1st place. Not sure how the tie breaker works, I'd imagine the winning percentage would come into play. There are supposedly Goldline prizes (they're everywhere!), so hopefully I'll win something other than my own satisfaction.

Speaking of the Curling News, the biggest break of the week came when I received my first copy of the Curling News (not to be confused with the United States Curling News). I subscribed in mid Summer to get more acquainted with the curling world and it just so happened I was contacted about contributing an American voice for the November issue. Since I've been doing it for free for the past year, I figured why the hell not, and my article has been published. Pretty rad. You'll have to subscribe to read it though.

The week ended with a double win. Feel My Heat FC won, securing our spot in the playoffs then Team Zissou won, clinching first place for the league. We won a nail biter against Natural Born Curlers. Last end, last rock. So, all in all, a good curling week.

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North Hollywood Town Hall

A couple weeks ago the USCA sent out an open letter to all curlers to inform us of the impending changes to the High Performance Program (HPP). If you weren't living under a rock this past Winter, you're aware that Team USA did not live up to expectations (or did they?). It's no surprise, then, that they will restructure how they select and train Olympic teams in the future.

It makes sense that they would start now, as curling powerhouse Canada has a 4 year Olympic trial process. Teams have to commit for that time to earn points to be able to qualify for the trials. As a result, any team coming out of Canada is a favorite to win gold. In the United States, you play in a regional qualifier, and if you finish at the top of that, you go to the Nationals. If you're near the top, you get one more crack at it during a challenge round. Anyone can sign up for the regionals. To give a little perspective, my wife and I played together on team at a spiel in Seattle. We beat a team that was 3/4 of a 2010 National Championships team that won more games than they lost at the 2010 spiel. Do we beat them again? Probably not, but I've had my ass handed to me enough times to know elite teams wouldn't let that happen against the likes of us. The point is, USA curlers aren't anywhere close to the level of a country like Canada. They're scheduling some Town Hall meetings across the country to discuss with members wants and expectations from the HPP. Seems reasonable enough, get thoughts from the athletes directly impacted, the competitive curlers, as well as the fans who are going to put the time in to support them. Though, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't already have their plans in place. Since I can't be there, and as of now, don't know anyone who will be there, I will participate in rampant speculation and half baked ideas. My thoughts on the letter: • They assembled a "working group" to represent a cross section of curling interests. I wonder who represented arena curling clubs? • "Created a vision of what a successful Olympic team will look like in Sochi in 2014, and began discussing how to make that vision a reality." I be they think it looks an awful lot like this. Suck it, playdown system! • "The programs in place were no longer adequately preparing our teams to consistently be the best in the world. To continue doing business as usual would be unfair to anyone who ever put on a slider with dreams of someday winning a medal for the USA. It is about providing the right athletes with the right training opportunities, going to the right competitions, with the best leadership and coaching available." Maybe we'll just take a page out of Russia's playbook. Here's my plan: American Curling Tour Identify 6-10 bonspiels throughout the year as part of the ACT. Get the USOC, USCA sponsors and WCT to pony up some dough for winners. Use money that might have gone to targeted teams and let teams earn cash along with points. The top 9 teams from the season go to the National Championships. Then teams 10-20 will compete in a playdown to get that final spot at Nationals. Make some sort of television deal Even if it's just on Ustream. You're telling me ESPN 3 or Versus wouldn't be interested? Universal Sports? If the Club Nationals can stream games complete with commentators, we can figure something out for these big events. ESPN shows bowling on Sunday morning, that could easily be curling. National Championships every year in Las Vegas No offense, Kalamazoo, but I wouldn't want to go there even if I was competing, let alone watching. I do, however, want to go to Vegas. If I know curling will be there every year in March, I will plan vacations accordingly. Vegas is fan friendly, you can even plan a conference or whatever around it with booths and demonstrations. Imagine all the out of towners you might be able to convert. Mix Curlers, liquor and gambling? It'll be like the cruise, only with hookers! All those ideas too traditional for you? How about this: Make it all a reality show Start out with 20 guys and 20 girls. Put them into teams, and do a tournament. The lowest ranked team gets booted the first week. The rest compete in competitions and get voted off each week. They can live in community room of a club. Heck, maybe you make it "The Bachelor" style, and pick a skip, and let him find the rest of his team with the help of the country. Then, once you get down to a couple teams, you send them to competitions, and the team doing the worst gets kicked off. We then end up with a pretty good team, and recognizable faces for the American viewing audiences. Boom. Olympic success. So, go forth and present my ideas to the USCA at their town hall meetings. The Seattle meeting is already happening, so feel free to burst in and yell "Suck it, playdowns!" Or, just post your thoughts in the comments below. Meeting Schedule: • Seattle - Tuesday, July 27th, Seattle Granite Curling Club • San Jose, Calif. - 5 p.m. Wednesday, July 28th, SFBACC • Minneapolis/St. Paul - 7 p.m. Thursday, July 29th, St. Paul Curling Club • Laurel, Md. - 7:30 p.m. Friday, July 30th, Potomac Curling Club • Bridgeport, Conn. - 3 p.m. Saturday, July 31st, Nutmeg Curling Club • Rochester, N.Y. - 2 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 1st, Rochester Curling Club

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Playdown Fail

Losing takes the desire to blog away from me. Also, fuck mantras. There's a fine line between thinking positive and being over confident. I don't know if I crossed that line, but I definitely didn't play as loose and relaxed as I would have hoped. I go into every game wanting to win, but in this case I went in almost expecting to win. I knew the teams we were going to be playing were better than us, but I still expected to win. We did not. I think everyone felt they could have played better, but I know I definitely could have. My balance was just off and I pressed a lot. Trying a little to hard, I just couldn't get going. I also got super negative in the first game, and I probably infected the rest of the team. I played my hardest to the end, but I knew we couldn't come back from that deficit. We gave up 3 in the first end and 2 in the second. In my head, it was already over before we gave up 4 in the fourth end. We played better in the second half of the first game, but that's like getting garbage time points in the second half of a blowout in the NBA or NFL. Sure, we looked better the second half, but they weren't playing the same either. Our second game was better, we stole one right off the bat, but then let them take the next six ends. We almost made it interesting. We are down 4 going into the last end without the hammer. Everyone knows we're done, but we keep playing. We end up sitting 2 with a wide corner guard sitting out on the left in front of one of theirs. As seen below. Skips last stone, our only option is to split our shooter off the guard into the house, while bouncing the guard off theirs into the house. It almost worked, but the guard didn't get close enough to the house. Even if it did, it would have given Ogden four choices for a take-out or simply draw in to win the game. He declined his last rock, so technically we lost 7-6. At least it looked respectable and better than last game. Not only was a I disappointed that we lost, and bummed we weren't going to go to Madison with the girls, I get shit from the wife for not congratulating her as I came off the ice. I couldn't buy a win. *** So next year is the new goal. Time to figure out what bonspiels to hit up and other events to participate in. We want to go to the PIC, but playing down in California is going to be difficult and I'll have a similar issue with getting days off work. We'll see how that goes. If not, we'll probably go to Arizona that weekend and Vacaville on Labor Day. Probably check out McCall's Rocktoberspiel and maybe Seattle's Holiday Spiel again next year. I also want to go to the 49er/Packer game in Green Bay next season, so a good time to check out the Green Bay club as well. What would be nice, too, is some sort of camp or clinic. I saw a WCF adult clinic in Prague, but aside from it being in Europe (and out of my price range) it is over Memorial Day weekend, and our bonspiel.

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We're going to F***ing Win

Yeah, I censored myself. What of it? This weekend we head to Seattle for our MoPac Playdowns. You can follow our results officially as Team Mendoza, and the girls as Team Messier. Unofficially, Bond Girls and Team Zissou will be live tweeting and blogging it up! I've gotten some flack from the team for suggesting we wouldn't make it past Saturday. I don't remember those being my exact words (and I don't really feel like re-reading my last post to see exactly what I said), hence the title of this post. See, winning will just make things complicated, whereas losing is cut and dry. However, I'm competitive by nature, so as soon as I'm in that club, All I'll think about is winning and I'll do everything short of pulling a Tonya Harding on Charles Taggart to do so. (Or will I? Where is Jeff Gillooly's number...) We've got our team jackets, a nice shade of blue. Never being really good at sports, I think I always had an appreciation for a uniform. Part of what made me quit the football team is the fact I didn't get my own number, but would have had to share week to week with someone else who wasn't going to play. So having a good uni is important to me. Last minute we decided to add our names to the jackets, though it's not necessary for playdowns, so I was being kind of anal about getting it done right. I wanted a certain font, done a certain way. Luckily, a friend of a friend was able to come through last minute and hook it up! Yes, I'm a uniform geek, whatever. That leads me to one of my extra motivational points. Aside from getting our vice hammered (he doesn't drink) off of Fireball if we win, they all agreed (we agreed for you, Tim) that we'll all get the fancy Nike plaid golf pants I've been rocking at practices. It'll be a week long event, so a change of clothes is going to be very necessary. Other motivational points: Going with the girls and keeping an eye on those Wisconsin boys! Bottom line, I want to fucking win. If we don't I will be severely disappointed. *** I spent the last two evenings after work making up Marissa's Bond Girls shoes. I totally forgot to take a picture, but I'm sure she'll post it on her blog soon enough. I had previously attached a 3/32" slider to her custom Adidas, but it wasn't thick enough. Using some potent stripper, I manged to remove the old slider and slap on a nice 5/32" piece of teflon. I got the kit from Olson, but they sent a different glue I wasn't too happy with. Hopefully it doesn't come apart on her. Previously I had used Shoe Goop and a glue from the LocTite line and those worked beautifully. We'll see how it goes. I was going to redo mine, but I've been playing so well lately with what I have, I don't want to mess anything up. It'll be a project for once I find the perfect shoes. *** • Via Bob Weeks' Twitter feed, the Nashville Predators took to the curling ice for a little team building. The Kings had done so a couple seasons ago, I believe under coach Marc Crawford. • Check out the January 14 episode of TSN's Off The Record for a panel with Randy Ferbey, Glenn Howard, David Murdoch and John Morris. Not a bad lineup. • Skip Cottage Curling is covering the Glynhill Ladies Invitational. Here's a photo of the American Women getting their first glimpse of Scotland.

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Party Down

We had our poker party fundraiser of the weekend, and it was a big success. We had a full house, poker wise, and a ton of cool items to raffle off. Folks were generous at the bar and Donna was generous with her pours! We rocked out on Rock Band and everyone was treated to some tasty food from Brent's Deli. Best pastrami ever. Big thanks to them for helping us out.

The Girls rockin' out on Rock Band!

Check out the awesome scarves Jen knit up.

The Final Two.

Also, we got our playdown schedule. We're going up against two other teams, Ogden and Arizona. It's supposed to be a double round robin, but because of time constraints, we have to settle on double elimination. I think that would probably favor us. If we get hot early, we can take advantage. If we were forced to play even more games, we'd probably end up losing those as the odds catch up to us. I was hoping to play some more meaningful games on good ice throughout the weekend, but either way it should be fun. As it stands, we'll probably be done by Saturday, and play some scrimmage games on Sunday. In anticipation of the playdowns, we decided to get in some practice time. The ice was worse than normal, so there was very little we could really practice. We went through the warm-up routine, and played a few ends to shake the rust off. The most interesting thing on Sunday was and LA Times reporter came to check out the game before his trip to Vancouver. So in between rocks, we each had a few minutes to spend and talk to him about the game and why we play and all that good stuff. It was good to see someone come in with an open attitude and respect for the game. It could easily go the other way. Other updates: • The Simpson's curling episode is to air on February 14. It should be a good one, and half of (as of yet unformed) Team Zissou helped instruct the writers and their family. • Make-it-Known has posted some classic Canadian curling clips from television and movies. • Rebel Scottish curlers (that would be a good band name) took to the frozen lochs despite the cancellation of The Grand Match. I love it. I've heard a ton of reasons why the first match in 30 years was canceled, and it makes sense. As a governing body, I don't want to be responsible if someone falls through that ice. At the same time, folks can make their own decisions and they did.