Chance for curl world to be heard

CURLING Canada chief executive officer Nolan Thiessen wants people thinking big thoughts and asking new questions about the sport.

The start of an Olympic quadrennial, the federal government's investment of an additional $755 million into high-performance sport over the next five years and the release of the Future of Sport in Canada Commission report this year all created food for thought about curling's future, he said.

“Everybody wants more people playing our game and everyone wants us to win medals and everything in between,” Thiessen said. “There's an opportunity to do that if we all kind of think about things in a systems way as opposed to an outcome-oriented way.

“It's going to be about the conversations that we have. Progress is more people curling, more people curling better, using our facilities more often with experiences that are memorable. That's progress.”

Curling Canada has launched a “Future of Canadian Curling” campaign that includes a seven-point infographic of goals and actions for curlers, clubs, athletes, coaches, provincial and territorial associations, government, sponsors and Curling Canada itself.

The CEO will write about shifts curling can make on the organization's website this winter.

“There's just an opportunity to kind of get together behind a bit of a shared purpose, a shared reason for being. I think it's time,” he said.

“We had some conversations with our member associations this spring and we worked together on a bit of a ‘what is success?’ From that, it turned into there's a few small tweaks in how we think and people will be able to kind of share the same success, the same North Star.”

He points out that when people say “I'm a curler” as opposed to “I play curling,” they identify strongly with a sport community. That's a card that clubs can play in recruiting and retaining people in the sport.