It's Go Time
Qualifier season is in full swing!
Just like that, it’s almost Thanksgiving. By this point, league play is underway at all dedicated ice clubs, and we are getting into the thick of bonspiel season. We’ve already had 4 different teams earn berths to the 5-and-Under National Championship!
In today’s post, I will share my thoughts on the last-minute announcement of a 5U qualifier change and go over the timeline of events to consider what avenues were truly options. Buckle up!
But first, let’s focus on teams that have qualified for the 5-and-Under National Championships over the past month. That’s where the spotlight should truly be.
5-and-Under Qualifiers
Coyotes 5U Superhero Bonspiel
Winner: Team Campbell (Coyotes Curling Club)
Runner-Up: Team Gilbert (Oval Curling Club)
The Coyotes 5U Superhero trophy is absolutely in the running for top 5U trophy out there. What you can’t tell from photos: the top of the base appears to be smashed with Thor’s hammer. It’s a trophy absolutely worth fighting for, and for yet another year, Coyotes kicked off the 5U qualifier season with teams vying for the trophy and a spot in St. Paul.
Team Campbell has been on an impressive upwards trajectory over the past few years. While the team lineup has changed, they’ve steadily improved each of the 3 years they’ve entered the spiel. Last year, they were one of the top teams at the event, barely missed out on the A bracket due to one loss, and went on to win the B event with a 5-1 record. This year, they made it through the group play into 8-team single elimination bracket unscathed.
They earned it too, defeating Oval Curling Club’s Team Gilbert in the final, a 2024 5U qualifying team last season. The final was incredibly tight and low-scoring with the only multi-point end coming in the 5th when Campbell converted with hammer to score 2. Up 1 without hammer in the 8th, Campbell managed to steal after throwing a beautiful tap to sit 1 under cover on his penultimate rock.
The Coyotes desert-themed jerseys are going to look great on the ice in St. Paul.
Mad Anthony 5 & Under
Winner: Team Carlson (Rocket City Curling Club)
Runner-Up: Team Dei (Potomac Curling Club)
In the 23-24 season, we did not have a team skipped by a woman qualify for nationals until the GNCC’s Child’s Women’s Challenge in February, and only one woman-led team qualified for nationals at an open event, which was Team Parks at the final qualifier of the year in Huntsville.
This year, it only took us to the 2nd qualifier of the year to have our first female skip book her ticket to the 5-and-Under National Championship. Fresh off competing at the Arena National Championships, Abbey Carlson and Jo Smith, along with teammates Matt Smith and Brice Russ, went 5-0 at Fort Wayne Curling Club. Two of her five opponents had curled at past national championships, and another one of her opponents was a finalist at one of the largest qualifiers last season.
In the final over Potomac’s Team Dei, Carlson set up a crucial skip’s deuce after a tight tap-back on her first rock in the 4th, and then in the fifth end, she made a perfect freeze to sit shot on her first rock to set up the steal. After forcing in the 6th and giving up a steal of 1 in the 7th, Team Carlson hit and stuck their final rock to score 4 in the final end to earn the victory.
In addition to her other accomplishments, the win from a Rocket City Curling Club team ensures representation of at least one arena team at the 5U National Championship. In each of the past two years, there has been only one team entirely of arena curlers to qualify for 5U nationals. We’ve already matched that total for 2025.
Cool Duck
Winner: Team Green (Diamond State Curling Club/Bucks County Curling Club)
Runner-Up: Team Sirois (Russell Curling Club)
A lot of things fell into place for the winner of the Cool Duck to qualify for 5U nationals, but I have an entire section dedicated to that at the end of this blog post.
The Cool Duck is the most difficult open 5U bonspiel to get into in the country with registration filling up almost instantly. I love clubs that have Curling Stadium, but one of the downsides to the system is that Ardsley can no longer have a massive inflatable duck looming over play.
Team Green didn’t let that disappointment impact them. The team made a pretty commanding run through the bonspiel, going a perfect 4-0 to take the crown of this 24-team spiel. They won their 8-team bracket, and thanks to the best DSC of the three 8-team bracket winners, they were able to advance directly to the finals.
They faced a talented team from Canada’s Russell Curling Club in the final, and it was incredibly close throughout. Up 2 without hammer in the 8th, the composite team of Diamond State and Bucks County curlers put a ton of pressure onto their opponent, and the Canadians had no way to score multiple points for the win.
Frogtown Five
Winner: Team Bliven (Appleton Curling Club/Green Bay Curling Club)
Runner-Up: Team Brown (Madison Curling Club)
Dan Bliven and Ben Jurenec have been a common sight at 5-and-Under Nationals. Over the past 3 years, they have won gold once and bronze twice, and they kicked off their season by booking a ticket to nationals in their first event. This time, they did it with a different front end and with Jurenec in the house.
The inaugural Frogtown Five proved to be a rigorous event with Bliven going a perfect 7-0 over three days to take the title over Madison Curling Club’s Team Brown. It wasn’t an easy run either. Team members on three of Bliven’s opponents in the lead-up to the final had competed at either the 2023 or 2024 5-and-Under National Championships.
In the final, it looked like it was solid victory for the former national champions, until a missed double attempt on Bliven’s last rock allowed Adam Brown to take 3 in the 7th end. Needing to steal one to at least force an extra, Brown was able to get some traffic in front of the house, but the team was never able to sink anything under the guards to sit as shot rock. Casey Kelpinski took out his own lead Johnnie Papineau’s shot rock to sit back button, and that rock was still there when it was all said and done to secure Team Bliven’s spot in St. Paul.
From everything I heard, Frogtown Curling Club lived up to its reputation as the “fun club.” I wanted to take a moment to commend the organizers of the Frogtown Five for being very thoughtful and intentionally working to host an event that was both competitive and fun. Some competitors told me they had a blast, and one of the organizers shared that teams managed to consume an entire Polar Spie’s worth of beer on Saturday night alone.
For everyone who says 5U is too competitive - I encourage you to go to these spiels, hang out, watch, and enjoy the show on and off the ice. Especially at clubs like Frogtown where the atmosphere is as good as the competition, you won’t be disappointed in what you find.
The Cool Duck Controversy
Reset the counter. It’s been 0 days since people got riled up about 5-and-Under curling again. To be clear, I’m not judging anyone about having heated opinions about this group of curlers. We’re actually starting to rival Canadian curling fans with how angry we’re getting about curling, and I’m impressed.
While the quantity of comments might not match up (yet), a USA Curling 5-and-Under social media post is starting to garner some of the same type of, shall we say, passion that you’d find on posts about Brendan Bottcher.
On November 6th, USA Curling published a press release announcing the change of qualifying events. The Raymond Kayser Memorial bonspiel was removed as a qualifier, and Ardsley’s Cool Duck bonspiel was added as a qualifying event. The tricky part? This was announced one day before the Cool Duck began. Without question, it was a tough look for USA Curling, but it’s hard to see any good solutions for the national organization.
Let’s review the timeline of events. Buckle up because this involves some of the USA Curling - GNCC (Grand National Curling Club) drama that has been prominent over the past few years.
In late spring, early summer of 2024, USA Curling requested applications for 2024-2025 national championship qualifying event hosts. They ended up receiving 31 applications for the 23 qualifying events. Bear in mind, this application and selection process is ongoing while USA Curling and GNCC are working on repairing their relationship and reinstating GNCC as a regional association which had not yet officially taken place.
When qualifiers were announced, the northeastern US was awarded qualifying events in Pittsburgh (open), Albany (women’s), Belfast (women’s), as well as the Kayser (mixed) which did not yet have a host site. From some digging and reading, it appears Cool Duck organizers missed the host site application announcement, and because they did not apply, they were not selected as a host. Based on comments read across the internet, I feel like I can pretty reasonably assume the Francis Dykes (men’s) was submitted as a qualifier applicant, but the host club, Rochester, is not a member club of USA Curling.
I don’t believe it’s unreasonable that USA Curling would only select member clubs to host events, so they awarded the GNCC a dateless, hostless event as a qualifier. Without knowing all applicants, the Kayser being selected served as a qualifier helped with two things:
It was an olive branch to the GNCC to continued reconciliation.
It was another opportunity for men to qualify for 5U nationals in the northeastern US, considering the region already was selected for two women’s qualifying events.
Since August, I’d seen repeated requests on GNCC social media in their search for a host site for the Kayser, but it wasn’t until recently they selected an early April date at Utica Curling Club. Just like Rochester, Utica is not a member of USA Curling which brings us to the conundrum if you’re USA Curling: Do you apply the “non-USA Curling clubs cannot host qualifying events” rule consistently? If you break this, then the choice to not originally select the Dykes rings quite hollow.
At this point, I believe there were a few options that USA Curling had before them:
Award the qualifying event to another bonspiel that had not been selected. Without knowing for sure, my guess is most of the remaining unselected qualifiers were in the Midwest, and many of them were in Wisconsin. Wisconsin and Minnesota are already hosting 8 events.
Do not award a new qualifying event and use the fill policy for 5U nationals, awarding a spot to the runner-up of the bonspiel with the most teams. Currently, that would be the Madison 5 & Under, which means an additional qualifying spot for a spiel in the Midwest.
Award the qualifying event to a bonspiel in the northeast who mistakenly did not apply this year.
USA Curling went with option 3. This serves as a continued olive branch to continue building their relationship with the GNCC and works with a filled event that likely would have been chosen had they actually applied anyways as they have been a qualifier for the past couple years.
However, the biggest issue with the decision stems back to the August qualifier announcement. The Cool Duck is one of the fastest filling bonspiels in the country, and registration opened before the qualifiers were announced. A number of teams signed up, assuming it would be a qualifier, and when it was not selected, some of those teams withdrew to focus their time and money on national qualifier events. The event was filled from their lengthy waitlist, and when the last-minute change to announce the Cool Duck as a qualifier came through, those teams were left high and dry.
When it comes down to it, there were no good options. Every option was going to not work for someone. Every option was going to make people upset. Based on some of the comments, it appears some GNCC leadership was appreciative to USA Curling for working with them as best as possible, so it appears the reconciliation continues to move forward, and hopefully these issues continue become fewer and farther between as the 5-and-Under National Championship gets more well-established.
For now, we’ll just have to hope the rest of the bonspiel schedule continues as-is with no extra hiccups or surprises. I’d much rather focus on actual curling.
Coming Up Next
If you are an organizer of one of qualifier spiels or playdowns, I deeply appreciate emails with results. This saves me an immense amount of time tracking down the results. You can reach me at hoppecurls@gmail.com.
Outside of Thanksgiving weekend, we get to enjoy one of the busiest stretches of 5U curling of the season over the next month.
PNWCA 5-and-Under Championship, Seattle Granite Curling Club (Nov 23-25)
Pittsburgh 5U, Pittsburgh Curling Club (Dec 5-8)
Midwest Cup, Kettle Moraine Curling Club (Dec 6-8)
USWCA 5 & Under Women’s East, Albany Curling Club (Dec 6-8)
Fighting Hornet, Charlotte Curling Association (Dec 6-8)
Jingle Rocks 5U, Stevens Point Curling Club (Dec 13-15)
We’ve also got our first club playdowns of the season beginning in December!
Wisconsin, Medford Curling Club, December 12-15
Mid-America Region, Rock Creek Curling (Dec 12-15)
Barring any other crazy things popping up in the next month, I’ll be back to recap those events next month and look at how the runner-up rankings are stacking up. In the meantime, check out my most recent article at The Curling News. Thanks for reading and, as always, good curling!
Great write up Ben! 👍🏼