You may all have seen the intriguingly titled ‘development session’ on the curling card for Tuesday 5th March.  This will be a ‘come & try’ session, and also hopefully an opportunity for anyone wanting to work on some aspect of their game to do so.  For planning purposes, could I please ask if you are planning on bringing someone along for come any try OR wish to come along yourself, please let me know (text / whats app) so we can keep a handle on numbers.

One (minor) problem we have in planning sessions like this one is that we have nobody in the club with an in date coaching certificate.  You have probably seen the email that came out from Richard Harding this week about coach training at Greenacres coming up in three weeks time.  That might be quite short notice for anyone for this year, but may I suggest you think seriously about whether this would be something you could do?  The training element is a one day course, plus you need to complete a child protection course and have an up to data PVG certificate.  Having our own ‘in house’ coaching element would be a benefit to the club.

At Christmas, Colin McDougall & I attended the Greenacres ‘President’s Bonspiel’ – a largely social curling event for all club presidents / secretaries who curl at Greenacres.  During chat at the event it became apparent how many clubs are down to a membership which only supports 2, 3 or 4 ‘league’ teams.  It also occurred to me that when I first started curling with BTS (as a relative newcomer) about 20 years ago we always had 8 league teams, rather than our current 6.  I think there is quite a big difference in playing only 5 league matches per half season rather than 7.  I propose to write out to all clubs curling at Greenacres to see if any are interested in adding some ‘friendly’ inter club fixtures to the calendar.  The idea is that all our league teams in each half, in addition to playing their 5 league matches, would play at least one inter club match.  If there is sufficient interest this could stretch to two.  I would propose we keep all these games to our usual Tuesday evening slot.  Please let me know what you think on this.  It will come up for discussion again at AGM, but interested to hear your thoughts between now & then either when I see you at Greenacres or by text.