Northern Ontario curling teams disappointed no qualifiers for national championships

CBC News

· Posted: Jan 07, 2022 9:00 AM EST | Last Updated: January 7, 2022

It's not a implicit astonishment that curling and different sports person been cancelled due to the fact that of the COVID-19 pandemic, but that doesn't marque it immoderate easier connected teams that had their hopes of representing Northern Ontario astatine a nationalist curling level dashed.

The Northern Ontario Curling Association cancelled the 2022 Northern Ontario playdowns, which were slated to beryllium held this week successful Kenora. The lawsuit was cancelled past week.

The lawsuit has some men's and women's curling teams from crossed the portion vie to find who represents the country astatine the Scotties Tournament of Hearts and Tim Horton's Brier. The Scotties are slated to beryllium held successful Thunder Bay, opening aboriginal this month, with the Brier acceptable for Lethbridge, Alta., successful March.

On Friday, the Northern Ontario Curling Association announced it had selected the squad led by Krista McCarville retired of the Fort William Curling Club successful Thunder Bay to beryllium its typical for the nationalist women's playdowns. The squad was chosen based connected its presumption successful the Canadian Team Ranking System.

"I wholly empathize with them, I deliberation they're close that it does suck, that it isn't just that they don't get the accidental to play," said NOCA enforcement manager Bobby Ray.

"But astatine the aforesaid time, I deliberation we're facing a wellness concern that's a small spot retired of our hands. It's perfectly not the determination that anybody wanted to make, but it's the 1 we're the astir comfy with." 

Ray said the interest was if 1 oregon 2 teams contracted COVID-19 portion astatine the event it would besides effect successful an unfair competition, arsenic those teams would beryllium incapable to implicit their games.

The decision, helium said, was astir safety, adjacent though helium understands players are frustrated.

Even though the playdowns were cancelled successful precocious December, the event would not beryllium allowed to proceed based connected existent provincial regulations.

Dylan Johnson, who was the skip of a squad based retired of the Fort Frances Curling Club for the men's draw, said portion not playing is frustrating, it besides has a fiscal cost.

He said the teams had to hold to bubble-type rules earlier the lawsuit would begin, which would mean fundamentally staying successful edifice rooms, lone ordering take-out, avoiding nationalist spaces, and going instantly to and from the arena for games.

Most teams agreed to the rules, helium said, but adjacent with that, the lawsuit was inactive cancelled.

"We enactment successful signifier time, we did immoderate tournaments, arsenic overmuch arsenic we could owed to the COVID circumstances, we enactment a batch of wealth into it," Johnson said, noting the squad is inactive trying to get a refund for its accommodations.

"We each booked clip disconnected work, I'm definite we tin spell backmost to enactment this week, but immoderate radical can't."