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.

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We Sponsored a Team!

Sean is joined by the members of Team Davies, the University of Alberta U21 Men's Team. We have joined their list of sponsors for this season, so Sean chats with them about their expectations for the year, how the curling program works at the University of Alberta, and the financial challenge junior teams face in raising funds. The discussion is followed by Sean discussing the PointsBet Invitational and the World Mixed Curling Championship.

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Let's Improve the Slams!

In this week's episode, Sean and Scott brainstorm some ways to improve the 6 events in the Grand Slam of Curling. After briefly recapping the World Junior Curling Championship (3:00), they go event by event to come up with ways to make the Slams more unique and interesting for curling fans. They talk about why they think the series needs some changes (8:10) and then go through the schedule with ideas to spice up each event - National (16:00), Masters (21:30), Tour Challenge (24:51), Open (28:46), Players Championship (31:45), Champions Cup (34:32).

For more, visit us at GameofStonesPod.com