Summer Season

Women's Sports & Identity

Sean talks with Michelle J. Manno, author of Denied: Women, Sports, and the Contradiction of Identity. They talk about Michelle's personal experience with collegiate basketball, how personal identity mixes with team identity in sports, and how players navigate contested spaces. They also discuss how coaches police players' identities, the role of TItle IX, and how these issues exist across all women's sports. 

For more, visit us at GameofStonesPod.com

Improving Engagement at the Rec Level

This week, Curl ON Executive Director Matt Allen joins the show to talk about his Engagement Tour Report (which you can read here). After spending more than 200 hours meeting with curlers and clubs across the province, Matt's report outlines ideas to increase engagement at the local level and proposes strategies to get more people playing the sport. From improving the online presence to attracting new and young curlers to adopting new business models, the report lays out a number of ideas to keep the sport strong at the grassroots. Do you think that these ideas will help increase engagement at the rec level?

For more, visit us at GameofStonesPod.com

Curling Trivia

Everyone loves a good trivia game, so this week Sean gives Scott some trivia questions related to the Scotties and Brier. Play along and see if you can beat Scott! If you do, be sure to let us know!

For more, visit us at GameofStonesPod.com

We Sponsored a Team! How'd it go?

This week Sean talks with the skip of Team Davies, Zach Davies. You may remember that we sponsored a team for the 2023-24 season, so we wanted to catch up with everything that happened over the winter. Zach talks about the challenge of skipping his team while also playing front end for the Canadian Junior Men's team, how the team improved over the season, and some of the highlights they experienced along the way - including some surprising road trip music choices.

For more, visit us at GameofStonesPod.com

Summer News Update

It's been a while since we caught up on all goings on around the world of curling, so this week we catch up with what's been happening. We talk the European C championships, some host city announcements for upcoming events, and the Canadian Wheelchair program selections. We also get into a report on recreational curling engagement from CurlON and finish the show with a special clip of what could Scott's big break.

For more, visit us at GameofStonesPod.com

Behind the Scenes of the Canadian Junior Program

In 2021, Curling Canada announced that it was changing the timing of the Canadian Junior Curling Championship, allowing teams that win a full season to prepare for the world championship. That puts junior champions in a unique situation as they have access to resources that were not previously available to Canadian champions. This week, Adam Naugler, the lead for Team Johnson Tao, joined Sean to talk about the team's season as the Canadian junior champions. He talks about the challenge of balancing curling and school, the pressure of the Junior B championship to qualify for the world juniors, the resources available to them from Curling Canada, and the state of junior curling in Canada.

For more, visit us at GameofStonesPod.com

2024 Curling Commercial Rankings

For the first time in a couple years, we were gifted with some new curling commercials for the 2024 Season of Champions! And as we love to do with a new batch of ads, we’re here to rank them. From agricultural products to Curling Canada promotions, there is a lot to discuss this year. What do you think of our rankings? Did we miss any ads this year?

For more, visit us at GameofStonesPod.com

Schedule Watch 2023

We're back from our summer break and looking ahead to the upcoming curling season! This week,  we go through some team schedules to see how the new Brier and Scotties qualification rules are impacting how teams pick their events. We talk about the defending champs, some established squads, and some up and comers to see if we can spot the differences in how they are approaching a new season. 

For more, visit us at GameofStonesPod.com

Name that Shot: Progressive Trivia Edition

We're back from a mid-summer break for another edition of Canada's Fastest Growing Game Show, Name That Shot! This time we're doing a progressive trivia version of the game, so play along with Scott as Sean gives clues that get increasingly easier and let us know how you scored.

For more, visit us at GameofStonesPod.com

How is Curling like Golf?

Join us as we head to the course to play of first round of the summer. Along the way we talk about the ways in which golf and curling are the same - from the warm-ups to the shot preparation to the conditions during the game. We also discuss our strategies, where we're the most comfortable, and how we played.

For more, visit us at gameofstonespod.com

Keys to Shot Making

What’s the most important thing you need to do to make a shot? We go through seven critical components of making a shot in an effort to determine which is the most critical. Let us know what you think is the biggest key to making shots!

For more, visit us at GameofStonesPod.com

What's Curling's Best Playoff Format?

After some time away from the mic, we're back to kick off our summer season of episodes! This week, we answer an interesting listener question: what is the best playoff format? Scott has gone through the numbers to see whether certain formats offer an unfair advantage and we also chat about the various formats that have been used and how we feel about them from a fan perspective. 

For more, visit us at GameofStonesPod.com

What's the Word? Another New Team Edition

While it may not be the frenzy that we saw last year, the end of this curling season has brought with it some big lineup changes and we're here to talk about it. We go through 13 of the biggest lineup changes for Canadian teams and offer up a word to describe each. Let us know how you would describe the lineup changes and if there are any shuffles we missed.

For more, visit us at GameofStonesPod.com

Postseason Power Rankings

We're back to start wrapping up the season that was in 2022-23! We start by stacking up all the teams in the 4-person game and seeing how they stack up against each other in our power rankings. Sean gives his list of the top 10 teams in the world while Scott offers up his feedback, including some honorable mentions. Let us know who you think we missed out in our rankings.

For more visit us at GameofStonesPod.com

Invitational Matchups Set, Early Season Results, & Eve Muirhead's Legacy

In this episode, Sean and Scott talk about what's happening in a strangely busy August in the world of curling. They start by talking about some early season events (2:00) before moving on to the first round matchups for the PointsBet Invitational coming up in September (Women - 7:00; Men - 22:40). They wrap up by talking about Eve Muirhead's retirement, legacy, and whether she is the greatest Scottish player of all time (35:20).

For more, visit us at GameofStonesPod.com