Thanks again to Pat Paeplow for the follow-up to our previous entry announcing the Tournament last weekend ..

Here is the story for the Milk Jug Curling Tournament. A reporter for the local newspaper (The Coos County Democrat) took some pics and I hope to forward some to you when they become available…………………

On Saturday night, March 4th, the Town of Whitefield came together to compete in the Inaugural Milk Jug Curling Tournament.

The Woodburn House Restaurant in Whitefield provided their lounge as a staging area for the event while competition took place on the skating rink in the Common.

Milk Jug Curling is similar to the Olympic sport of curling with the only difference being that instead of granite stones, competitors hurl jugs of frozen milk. Each team alternately throws three jugs of milk, vying to have their jug land closest to the bull’s eye which results in one point. Players may also hurl their jug at opposing teams jugs in order to knock them away from the bull’s eye. The winner is determined by which team has the most points after three rounds of play.

The event organizers, John Guest and Patrick Paeplow of Whitefield, were pleasantly surprised by the turnout. Twelve teams of three people competed for the right to declare themselves the winners of the Inaugural Tournament. “It started off as kind of a joke”, Paeplow, an employee at the Woodburn House Restaurant, said “then, people kept talking about it then people I didn’t even know started calling the restaurant for information about the tournament and we were like, ‘wow’ we’ve got a live one on our hands.”

Guest, declaring the tournament a success, said “I don’t think it’s something where we’re geniuses who calculated that this would go over really well, I think its just an attribute of our community where we want to come together and have some fun.”

Mr. Guest also took time to praise Steve Kennison, the town road agent in charge of maintaining the ice rink. “He deserves a lot of credit. Whenever its freezing cold and most people want to be in their living room with the heat cranked, its his signal to come out here in the middle of the night and freeze so kids can go skate and we can have goofy tournaments, hats off to him.”

The championship game was an event of high drama as Allison Marro’s Team Lactose Intolerant squared off against John Wyman’s Team Leche Frio. With the score knotted at two after regulation, the match headed into an overtime round. It looked as though Team Leche Frio would prevail as they had two jugs biting the Bull’s Eye as Patrick Paeplow came to the line for the final throw of the tournament. With the elements and the pressure of the moment working against him, Paeplow had thrown his first two jugs out of bounds. However, his final through barrelled into Team Leche Frio’s first jug sending it out of play then nudged their second one out of scoring range to become the closest jug resulting in one point which one the frame, the match and ultimately, the tournament.

“I have to give credit to Allison”, Paeplow said, “her sweeping on that final throw must have moved my jug half a foot, laterally. Curling is a team sport.

John Wyman couldn’t help but notice that the Event Organizer’s team had won the tournament. “I just find it odd, but whatever, it’s all for fun, right.”

Matt Houghton of Whitefield, whose team, Chef Matt’s Kitchen Crew, made it o the final four put it in perspective, “John Wyman is the sorest loser I’ve ever met.”

After picking up the Common, all the competitors headed back to the Woodburn House to toast in victory, wallow in defeat and talk about the prospects of a second annual Milk Jug Curling Tournament.

Well! Hopefully Pat will send us some pictures of the event

Greetings … I received the following public service announcement from a reader using our Contact Form:

Patrick Paeplow wrote:

The citizens of Whitefield, New Hampshire, located in the majestic White Mountain National Forest would like to announce the commencement of the annual Milk Jug Curling Tournament on Saturday March 4th.

The tournament to benefit family dairy farmers and maple sugarers will take place on The Whitefield Common. Registration is at 7:00 pm at The Woodburn House Restaurant, located on The Common in Whitefield. Commencement ceremonies will be at 7:30 pm with the first rock being dispatched at 8:00 pm.

Let’s forget about our troubles and come together to help utters! ! !

Admission is free and open to the public.

Donations will be accepted on behalf of various dairy associations.

The Event Coordinator is Jon Guest who can be reached at 603-837-2254 with any questions.

Anyone needing driving directions to Whitefield, New Hampshire would best be advised to consult Yahoo! Maps or a similar tool.

Pat promises to email me the tournament results and all other pertinent information at the conclusion of the event, and I will post the results here in the Curling Blog. The event is also entered into the Curling Blog’s Event Calendar

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If you have a Curling Related event posted in here – please send me the details in the Contact Form, including a website, email, phone number, and any other information you feel is important. I will also add the event into the Curling Calendar, accessed from the top link above the Masthead logo.

Whitehorse Star Online – Curling club announces new major event – The Nuway Crushing Cash Spiel

By ECHO ROSS

Remember the excitement generated by the Canadian mixed curling championship, held in Whitehorse last month? From the energy of the spectators and the buzz around town, to the exceptional level of curling that Yukon residents were treated to by the provincial and territorial teams throughout out the championship? Well, pretty soon Yukon residents will be able to experience all of that on an annual basis. The Whitehorse Curling Club (WCC) has announced that it plans to operate an annual major cash spiel, to begin next November.

The Nuway Crushing Cash Spiel will be held at the Whitehorse Curling Club, from Nov. 16-19, 2006. And in addition to the Yukon, rinks are expected from Alaska, B.C. and Alberta.

“The response to the concept has been awesome,” commented Dave Thompson, president of WCC. “We have been able to secure a major portion of the sponsorship necessary prior to the event, with Nuway Crushing taking the title sponsor of the event for the next four years.”

Other sponsors already confirmed for the annual event are Skookum Asphalt, Air North and McDonald’s Restaurant. It is expected that at least 18 teams would compete for the prize pool of over $ 18,000 in cash. First prize will be $ 6,000, paying down to eighth place.

It’s an idea that the curling club has been batting around for a while, said Derek Charlton, the general manager of the club. Recently, they approached their regular sponsors with the idea, including Nuway, and their commitment made it official.
“Nuway Crushing is such a huge sponsor of curling, and sports around the territory, so they were a natural choice,” said Charlton.

Now, the club will be applying to affiliate the event with the World Curling Tour (WCT) as soon as they are ready to receive applications for the next season, with the hope that this new event will be added to the already very hectic bonspiel schedule planned for the last half of the 2005/2006 curling season, and the upcoming 2006/2007 season.

“We’ve chosen a week on the curling tour that is not a heavy week already,” explained Charlton. “We’re bound to have some competition, but we were looking for a week that didn’t have another major western spiel and wasn’t during the Fairbanks spiel either.”

Charlton expects to fill out the official paperwork to join the WCT in April, though it should just be a technicality. He’s been told verbally by Canadian Curling Association (CCA) officials that it won’t be a problem to join the tour, especially after the rave reviews the local curling club received following the mixed nationals.

“We’ve already received a couple of inclinations from a couple of world curlers that they will be attending (the major cash spiel),” he said. “We’re actually in the midst of working it out with a well-known world-class curling team, so that they will attend. We’re working with Air North on it, so they will bring the team in.”

Charlton wouldn’t provide the name of the team, but he did give a couple of major hints, including the fact they hail from Edmonton.

“For the first year of the event, it would be great to see an Olympic-class team come to Whitehorse,” he added. “They’ve been here before and they loved it. They were here for the TSN Skins Game.”

A major national event always bodes well for the economy, with those competitors coming from Outside booking hotel rooms, eating at local restaurants and purchasing souvenirs. Charlton expects the Nuway Crushing Cash Spiel will be no different.

“November is generally a pretty slow month, as far as hotels, restaurants and taxis,” he said. “Any type of event that can be held in the slower months helps the economy to stabilize itself. The more stuff we can fill the calendar with, in between summer, Christmas and Rendezvous, it will only help the business community.

“I think it’s important for us to diversify the tourism season.”

Charlton hopes the addition of a major annual event, with national-championship level curling, will also draw more attention to the sport locally. At the mixed nationals, local school kids attended the curling matches as part of a project, and most of them seemed to enjoy the intense action.

“Of course we want to focus on local curling as well, but every major competition you bring in like this, it draws more attention to curling and hopefully gets more kids and adults interested in the sport locally.

“That’s what the TSN Skins Game (when it was hosted in Whitehorse) did for me.”

The current trend in curling across Canada is either a limited increase in enrolment numbers or a decline, so Charlton said he would be happy if the current numbers in Whitehorse remained where they are over the next season. As the CCA develops a new marketing campaign over the next couple of years, and the trend starts to change, then the local club can start hoping for higher numbers, he said.

“It’s not like the old days. There’s a lot more winter sports for people to choose from out there, a lot more competition,” he pointed out.

With a recent announcement of a new sponsor in Ice Wireless, which will see the Yukon’s newest cellular provider as the title sponsor of the traditional Friday Fun League, as well as the Funspiel, WCC at least has a healthy sponsorship base.

“We’re doing well,” said Charlton. “It just goes to show we treat our sponsors very well.”

Here is some background on the World Curling Tour:

In 1989, the Association of Competitive Cashspiels debuted with 15 events, and was organized by legendary curling figures Ed Lukowich, John Kawaja and Eugene Hritzuk. All were prominent curlers in the cashspiel circuit and had won many major curling championships between them. These pioneers were instrumental in organizing the many cashspiels across the country into a competitive circuit.

In 1990, the Canadian Cashspiel Tour (CCT) emerged with 60 events, and was run for two years under this moniker. In 1992, the CCT changed its name to the World Curling Tour, and featured events from coast to coast, culminating in a season-ending Tour Championship, consisting of the top performers from the events over the course of the tour season.

Original tour founders included Lukowich, Ray Turnbull, Arnold Asham and James Furgale.

Rogers SportsNet began broadcasting live WCT events in 1998, as well as the Tour Championship. In 1998-99 and 1999-2000, there were 10 weekly televised WCT events on SportsNet in the fall.

Under the direction of Chad McMullan in 2001, and with the backing of major sports management organization IMG Group, the WCT undertook a new series of championships, called the Grand Slam series, which featured top teams battling it out in high-profile, high-stakes matches, usually set in arenas before thousands of fans.

SportsNet turned the focus of its coverage to these GrandSlam events, and broadcasted live games from the championship round of these events. Renowned curler Marilyn Bodogh, and Tour founder-turned broadcaster Lukowich, hosted these live broadcasts.

In 2005, the Women’s Tour of Curling merged with the WCT, and the tour was re-branded as the Ultima World Curling Tour.

Copyright 2005 Whitehorse STAR