Championship Season Approaches!
Looking ahead to the USA Curling Arena, Club, and 5-and-Under National Championships
In just a few weeks, the USA Curling championship slate gets underway with the Arena National Championship. I’m aiming to cover the arena, club, and 5U national championships, qualifying events, and qualified teams. Before the championships start, let’s take a closer look at championships, formats, and changes from last season.
I won’t be providing a preview of the all the teams at Arena Nationals in this post, but stay tuned for a preview of the teams headed to Wausau in a couple weeks!
Arena National Championship
October 23-27, 2024
Wausau Curling Club, Wausau, WI
For any non-US readers, “arena curling” refers to curling on shared ice. Others may refer to this as “hockey ice” or “skating ice”. If you ever hear an American curler refer to arena ice, we’re not talking about what you see at the Slams, national championships, or world events. Our arena ice in the States means zambonis, installing hacks for every league night, and incredible amounts of fall, S-curves, and other things that curling rocks are not supposed to do.
Format
The women’s and men’s championships will run simultaneously. Each championship features a 12-team field split into two pools. Each pool will play a 5-game round robin.
I have heard the championship will use a different format than what’s found in the Qualifying Procedures document. From what I heard, the top 3 teams from each group will move on to the playoffs. The top team from each pool receives an automatic bye to the semifinal. In the quarterfinals, the third-ranked team from pool A plays the second ranked team from pool B, and vice versa.
Eligibility
The biggest key for eligibility is that curlers cannot curl in more than ten league games at dedicated ice clubs in the calendar year. Bonspiels do not count toward the total, so this is really helping to ensure the event is for arena curlers only. Because arena curlers do not typically have the same type of access to practice and develop, this is a great event to provide competition opportunities who might have a harder time competing with dedicated ice club curlers at other playdowns.
Qualifying Events
Each region who intended to send a team to nationals hosted a regional playdown or selection of some kind. The GNCC, recently reinstated by USA Curling, held a drawing this year.
If a region did not intend to send a team, that region’s spot will be filled by the 2nd place team of the playdown with the most registration spots available. (Alaska is not sending a team for either the men’s or women’s championships)
New this year: a Last Chance Qualifier Bonspiel was created which named both a men’s and women’s qualifier. The inaugural event was hosted by La Crosse Curling Club in La Crosse, WI.
Changes This Year
The aforementioned Last Chance Qualifier Bonspiel. I’d love to see this come back next year with a larger turnout.
All team members no longer need to come from the same club, but all members of a team must curl out of the same regional association (Mountain Pacific, Mid-America, Grand National Curling Club, etc.).
Arena curling clubs usually tend to have lower membership, and removing any club association limitations creates more opportunities for curlers who want to pursue competitive opportunities to compete, especially if their home club doesn’t have enough team members to put together a competitive team.Because the championship is now being hosted at a dedicated ice club, the host site does not receive an automatic berth. This is the first year the winner of the previous year’s championship received an automatic berth. This change created much rejoicing for the Mid-America (MACA) region as DFW’s Nick Myer’s rink and Houston’s Julie Segovia rink have each won the title for multiple seasons in a row.
Streaming
Wausau Curling Club announced on Facebook they had purchased Curling Stadium cameras for their sheets which means all sheets of Arena Nationals should be streamed! I should have more information on this by the next post.
Club National Championship
March 26-30, 2025
Milwaukee Curling Club, Cedarburg, WI
Format
The women’s and men’s championships will run simultaneously. Each championship features a 12-team field split into two pools. Each pool will play a 5-game round robin.
As with Arena Nationals, the Qualifying Procedures document lists a different playoff format than what’s found in the Rules of Curling document (which is what I was told would be played at Arena Nationals). Assuming the 6-team playoff is held, I expect USA Curling will take feedback from Arena Nationals and determine which format to use at Club Nationals. I hope it’s the 6-team playoff just because it can lead to more chaos, and chaos is fun.
Eligibility
All curlers on a team must be league-playing members of the same club. Surprisingly, the documentation doesn’t limit curlers from being eligible to compete with multiple teams at multiple events. This could potentially come into play this year as Milwaukee Curling Club is in close proximity to a number of other clubs.
As the host club, Milwaukee is guaranteed a team in the women’s and men’s events. If a curler were to sign up to play leagues at Milwaukee as well as another nearby club (Kettle Moraine, Wauwatosa, etc.), they could potentially play in the Wisconsin playdowns as well as the host playdowns.
Qualifying Events
Each region who intends to send a team to club nationals will have a playdown or selection.
The region with the greatest number of entries per gender will receive an additional berth.
The host club receives a women’s and men’s entry into the championship.
Changes This Year
As far as I can tell, there are no major changes from last year to this year. While no formal announcement has been made that it will be back for round two, I expect we’ll see the women’s and men’s champions move on to the Everest North American Curling Championships once again. I hope to see it return to Rock Creek Curling in 2025.
Streaming
Milwaukee Curling Club currently streams all their sheets on Twitch, with each sheet having a dedicated Twitch channel. USA Curling typically commits to ensuring the Men’s and Women’s Club Championships are streamed each year, and last year even though Curling Stadium was set up in Fargo, USA Curling provided a stream on their YouTube channel. I assume games will likely be streamed on YouTube for this event, but it would be interesting if the Twitch streams run for Club Nationals!
5-and-Under National Championship
April 30-May 4, 2025
St. Paul Curling Club, St. Paul, MN
Format
The 5-and-Under National Championship is a 24-team event. The teams are split into four groups and play a 5-game round robin. The top two teams from each group advance to the playoffs for an 8-team single elimination bracket.
Eligibility
This championship is intended for adults who want to get more into competitive curling but did not have the chance to start competing until they were adults. As a result, all competitors must be at least 21 and have 5 or fewer years of experience (see Changes section for more on this).
Qualifying Events
There are 23 qualifying events held around the United States. Some of these events have limitations based on gender or membership in regional associations. We are waiting on a few of the events to announce more details.
One qualifying spot is reserved for the host site, St. Paul Curling Club.
If an already qualified team goes on to win another qualifying event, their spot is then offered to the runner-up of the qualifying bonspiel with the most entries. This year, that first runner-up entry is expected to go to the Frozen 5-and-Under in Madison. The runner-up team from Madison has qualified for nationals each of the last 3 years.
To read more about some of the challenges faced with qualifying events, check out my Qualifiers Preview and Review previous post.
Changes This Year
USA Curling changed the calendar calculation for years of curling to be based on a conventional season calendar (July-June) instead of January-December. You can read the specifics here. Unfortunately, this does mean a few people lost some eligibility time when they thought they had possibly another year. What this should do, however, is to help limit the number of longer-time curlers participating.
To use myself as an example, I only played 8 games in fall of 2018 which meant by the prior ruleset, that would not have counted as a year of curling. Had I competed and qualified for this season’s championship, a curler who started in 2018 would have been competing in 5U in 2025, and that’s not right. I’m glad to see this change come through.
Streaming
St. Paul Curling Club already has streaming set up, which is the first time 5U nationals is being held at a club with some semblance of streaming infrastructure! Last year, some donors came together to make sure one sheet had a dedicated stream with commentary, so this is a welcome change!
Other 5U Notes
On the September Club Council meeting, Dean Gemmel, CEO of USA Curling, mentioned a few interesting tidbits I wanted to highlight.
There is a distinct possibility that just because some clubs have hosted a 5U qualifier the past few years, they won’t necessarily host one next year. There is a distinct possibility for some churn year over year to allow new and different clubs to host qualifier events.
He would like to announce the qualifying bonspiels earlier (as early as April or May) so teams have more time to plan their seasons, which also means host applications would be opened up earlier (possibly as early as February). I think the host application window will be helpful as many boards are more active in-season than out-of-season.
Dean mentioned the possibility of eventually moving toward a championship with 6 women’s teams and 18 open-gender teams. It wasn’t clear to me if he intended this to be one championship event of 24 teams, or two individual championships of different sizes, though I expect he was intending for one championship. I don’t believe we’d see this change implemented for a few years, if we get to that point.
See For Yourself
Want to dig deeper into the USA Curling documents I used to put together this post? Click the links below! Please note: USA Curling might update the links to new documents. You can always find up-to-date documentation on the USA Curling website.
In a few weeks, I’ll be previewing the 2024 Arena National Championship, and around that same time, the first 5U qualifier of the season is kicking off. Curling is about to be in full swing, hold on tight!
Good curling!