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The Viterra Last Chance Scotties qualification tournament at the Power Dodge Curling Centre had a lot of drama for the teams involved.

The Scotties women’s curling provincial championship is a rollicking time, with some of the best shot-making in any of the provinces. The quality of teams in Saskatchewan and depth of these teams is arguably better that anywhere in the country. So you want to get there.

For all of the teams involved, it was literally their last chance to qualify for the provincial Scotties tournament in Melfort. And there was no shartage of quality among the teams here. You had Candace Chisholm from Weyburn winning the A side plus Stefanie Lawton from Saskatoon winning the B side. That’s a lot of experience with those teams, not the least of which was Lawton’s four provincial Scotties wins as skip. Lawton’s rink just barely lost to Penny Barker in last year’s priovncial Scotties or else she’d have a fifth title.

Chisholm added Lana Vey to the team as third. Vey has had four appearances at the national level, including a silver medal in 2007. Mandy Selzer of Balgonie, who won a national junior title only 11 years ago, was here.

That’s just the qualification level for the women’s provincial Scotties. Unfortunately for women’s curling, only nine teams will be there in Melfort for a round robin. I hope we get that tournament here in the near future. But there’s another major curling event coming to this area that people are looking forward to: the 2018 SaskTel Tankard.

The 16-team triple knockout event for the men’s provincial curling crown has only four teams that have qualified so far officially (Estevan’s Brent Gedak being the most important name to have here), but we can count on the points standings of the major national and provincial tours to add some more familiar names. Rinks skipped Steve Laycock, Colton Flasch, Adam Casey and Josh Heidt would all qualify today through their CTRS points standings if the deadline was today.  While Laycock lives in Saskatoon, his second residence could likely be listed as ‘The Brier’, having been there six times already as a member of a provincial championship team.

There are people in the area who will find curling tickets in their stockings. I hope they enjoy the draws as much as I would because it’s bound to be very good, even in the early matches. There will be some truly elite teams among the 16 that will be here.

But the issue with curling has lately been seen to be that the youth haven’t quite taken to the sport as their parents and grandparents did. Efforts to improve scoring, strategy and professionalism of some of the elite teams have taken away a part of the original appeal of curling: that anybody with a razor sharp sense of direction and a mind for chess could do this. 

As a spectator sport, many have been able to watch the game on TV and listen to the strategy of the teams involved. Putting microphones on the players has been an amazing way to listen to what they’re thinking and why they’re doing it, and the implications when they mess up.

There were only a few people there at the last chance tournament last weekend for the A final and the B final, many of which were family and friends of Chisholm and her team. Given the quality of teams there, there should have been more but this is the Christmas season and the tournament is usually held in January (pushed earlier because of the Olympics this year). 

I really hope the city and area residents come out in droves for the Tankard in a few weeks. It’s the only proper Saskatchewan send-off for the team that will go to Regina as the representative for the Tim Hortons Brier.