Open call for June Wisconsin Team USA camp

Team USA manager Marc DePerno has issued an open invitation to any American wheelchair user who has the interest and desire to explore wheelchair curling, to attend a summer training camp in Wisconsin June 2-5.

The camp will be held at the Green Bay Curling Club, and will be directed by Team USA coaching staff. Wheelchair users may attend for one or more days, with the program building each day on what has previously been covered.

With two members of the 2011 team retiring, there are opportunities for athletes with the desire to represent their country at a Paralympic sport, to discover what wheelchair curling is all about.

Registration deadline is May 23. You can view the information sheet HERE or email Marc DePerno or call him at 315-737-2459 for more information

USA Trials to be held in Green Bay WI, September 24-26

USA Curling is holding a weekend of trials for participation on Team USA, at the Green Bay CC the weekend of September 24-26.

This is an open camp. To register contact Marc Deperno by email or call 315-737-2459.  The Trials will consist of individual skill events, mini games and personal interviews.  Coaches will be evaluating skill, game knowledge and strategy, team dynamics, leadership and potential.

For more information visit the USA Curling Association website.

Inside the head of Team USA skip Goose Perez

 Augusto 'Goose' Perez and Patrick McDonald
[photo - Richard Lam]

Last season the rap on the American skip was that he was a talented thrower  who was perhaps too much of a prima donna for the good of the team.

That seems to have changed this year as he has grown into his role and learned more about the game. The increasing role of no-nonsense Army vet Patrick McDonald in the team may also have had an influence.

It's certainly a more humble Perez who appears in this interview, which gives a good insight into what goes through his mind as he skips his team. Read it HERE.

Team USA give lessons in Robson Square

The coach and members of Team USA gave some lessons to on-lookers in Robson Square.

USA Coach Rusty Schieber gives a lesson

[from Inside Vancouver blog] Out on the Robson Square ice, members of the Team USA wheelchair curling squad were giving a demonstration and free lesson. Onlookers with disabilities made their way into the rink and formed a circle of wheelchairs around the American coach, who explained the basics of “rocks,” “houses” and keeping score. Watching the demonstration – with kids in wheelchairs and on crutches taking turns slinging 42-pound curling stones down the ice – I got a glimpse into a little of what Paralympic competition is about: inclusion, optimism and improvisation.

"If I don’t have headache, I didn’t think hard enough" - Perez

Goose Perez, braced by Jimmy Joseph and watched by lead Jacqui Kapinowski

Team USA's Augusto 'Goose' Perez says he loves skipping. “It makes me think. If I don’t come off the ice with a headache, I didn’t think hard enough,” he told Grant Granger of the Abbotsford News. Read the article HERE.

The USA team trained at the Abbotsford CC at the invitation of Linda Kirton, who will be taking the oath on behalf of the officials at the Paralympic Opening Ceremony tomorrow evening.

Goose took (friendly) exception to my suggestion in the Paralympic preview that he loves the hero shot.


"if we end up wih a tough shot either because of misses or errors in game calling on my part, then i am ready to take responsibility. I have always avoided the hero shot which may win you games but not championships. The fact is that in the past by our own mistakes, probably mostly in errors of mine in calling the game, we have found ourselves in a spot to throw not the shot we wish but the one we had to. One thing is right, if it needs to be thrown i don't shy away if that's the only choice we see. Remember most heroes end up dead!"

Team USA's Jimmy Joseph hoping for gold for daughter's birthday

Jimmy Joseph - Team USA 2nd at 2009 Worlds

Jimmy Joseph told the Herkimer Evening Telegram the Paralympic final falls on his daughter’s third birthday. “Hopefully, I’ll be playing for a gold medal to bring her home as a present,” he said.

Read the full profile HERE

Team USA's McDonald has another chance to represent his country

Californian Patrick McDonald, the only Team USA curler not competing out of the Utica CC, is profiled HERE.

What’s the coolest thing about being a Paralympian?

“I get to represent our country again,” says the patriot, who served as a Cavalry Scout 19 Delta from 1989 to 1992.

Using the Paralympics to publicise the sport

Team GB third Aileen Neilson gave an extended interview to Paul Thomson of the East Kilbride News. She talks about her life before her disability, how she came into wheelchair curling, how she has prepared for Vancouver and her hopes for success.

Scots curlers, who make up the Great Britain team, are generously financed by the government and appear to see publicity as part of their responsibility to the sport. I have recently linked to articles mentioning every member of their team.

Team USA also feature regularly in the press and media, as the USA curling authorities understand that the national team is their best advertisement for increasing participation. Again I have linked to articles on all the team.

Canada has instituted a pre-Paralympics media protocol explicitly discouraging informal press (including me) contact with team members, and insisting that all requests for interviews be cleared with a "media liason officer." Standard procedure. apparently, but just one reason why you'll find so little information about the team on this blog, or read mainstream media stories covering anything other than Jim Armstrong's phoenix-like rise from the ashes of a ruined able-bodied curling career.

Team Canada, also funded by public money, should be doing everything in their power to court publicity, realising that often means not only going out of their way to contact media with stories, but supplying journalists, notoriously lazy, with material.

Instead they issue no press releases, or invitations to watch the team prepare.  They don't train in different locales while inviting local curlers to interact with the team, which would attract local TV.

You can call it necessary focus, and claim that gold in Vancouver wipes away all objections, but making a two year campaign solely about winning a gold medal puts everything in just one basket, and we can only hope it's a sturdy one.

To be successful a sport has to make its audience care about the participants. If all Canadians are asked to care about is a gold medal, then it's a disaster getting anything less. But more, once the competition is over, people will stop caring, and that's no way to nuture a sport and provide for the future.

Communication key to USA success, says coach Brown

Jim Pierce - Team USA vice-Skip
(photo - Sitrin)

Team USA coach Steve Brown told Universal Sports reporter Josh George that involving all the team members in the game will help skip Augusto 'Goose' Perez and improve the team.

“When you can get four people, four sets of eyes (assessing the situation), you’ll be a lot stronger than one,” Brown said during a phone interview.

"Goose knows the strategy comparable to the top teams, but he is still going to make mistakes sometimes,” said Brown. “But if you have that extra set of eyes, instead of making a call that is almost guaranteed to backfire, you have someone making you take that second look.”

Vice-skip Jim Pierce commented after the US Open, "We did gain some ground in communication, which is a huge thing....Everybody has to stay in the game, you can’t just shoot your two shots and be done.”

Read what you will between the lines here, but having met the team and seen them play, I know Goose is a forceful personality who relishes the big occasion and the opportunity to make the spectacular shot. If he is able to draw on the insights of the quieter members of his team, the game calling may become less adventurous, but USA's medal prospects may improve.

USA beat Great Britain in Cathy Kerr final

Teams had an early start Sunday morning as the semi-finals of the the Annual Cathy Kerr Memorial Spiel began at 8.30am at Ottawa's RA Club.

Great Britain beat Chris Sobkowicz's Manitobans 6-3 and USA beat last year's Ontario champions Team Gregory 8-6.

In the afternoon final it was USA over Great Britain 9-4, with Gregory claiming bronze with a 9-5 win over Sobkowicz. Great Britain had Michael McCreadie calling the game from 3rd with Aileen Nielsen throwing last rocks. Team USA rotated their fifth player, who then skipped the USA 2 side.

In the recreation division Robert Michel was the winner and Aaron Wong-Sing was the runner-up. Both teams are from Ottawa.

The results mean that Bruce Cameron, Ken Gregory and Chris Rees all qualify for the Ontario ParaSports Winter Games to be held in Kingston in January 2010. Richard Fraser will be the alternate.

During the semis and finals, the other competitive teams curled for pride and experience so everyone had six games over the weekend.

Meanwhile Great Britain and USA play in Ottawa

Bruce Cameron and the Capital Wheelchair Curling Club have assembled the largest competitive field outside of a national championships for the 5th Annual Cathy Kerr Memorial Spiel at the RA Curling Club in Ottawa this weekend.

Ten teams, including Great Britain and two teams from the USA are competing against teams from Manitoba, Quebec and five Ontario teams. This is also a qualifying event to become one of the three teams that wlll attend the Ontario Winter ParaSports Games to be held in Kingston in January 2010.

There are two pools

Group A                                        Group B

Gregory (Bradford)                        Cameron (Ottawa)
Rees  (Toronto)                            Fraser (Ottawa)
Claus (London ON)                        USA 1 (Perez)
Great Britain  (McCreadie)              Manitoba (Sobkowicz)
USA 2                                          Quebec   

Draw 1 Results

Manitoba 6-4  Fraser (Ottawa)

Great Britain 9-5  Rees (Toronto)

USA 2  17-4   Claus (London)

Cameron (Ottawa)  11-4  Quebec

Draw 2 Results

USA 2  8-7  Rees (Toronto)

USA 1  11-2  Quebec

Gregory (Bradford) 16-0  Claus (London)

Cameron (Ottawa) 9-4  Fraser (Ottawa)

There is also a recreational division with four teams from the Capital Wheelchair urling Club and one team from Quebec.