Dan York

A Crazy Day of Curling (Across Generations)

Today was a CRAZY day of curling! It began at 9:00am when our 7-year-old took to the ice at Petersham Curling Club (PCC) for her first day as a member of the "Little Rocks" youth program (ages 7-12). It ended with me going on the ice back at PCC at 8:15pm to play in the Mixed League (men and women) until after 10:00pm.

In between those times, our 14-year-old daughter was up in the Toronto, Canada, area playing with her team against 15 other highly competitive Canadian and US teams. Her team had two games - 11:00am and 5:00pm - and wound up winning both of them... but with extremely tense and nail-biting endings!

I think I gained a good bit of white hair today... and that was just from watching the website and getting updates sent by messages from one of the parents up there in Canada!

It was a great day! From the boundless energy and enthusiasm of our 7yo, to our daughter's team winning their two games... to my team squeaking out a narrow win (it came down to the final stone!).

A crazy day... but a good one!

Heading To The 2016 USA Curling Junior National Champshionships!

Yea! Our daughter's curling team is heading to the 2016 USA Curling Junior National Championships this month! Her team will be one of the top 10 junior women's teams competing for the championship in Willmar, Minnesota, from January 16-23. She and her team are SO excited!

Over the holiday break her curling team competed at the regional "GNCC Playdowns" where three womens teams were competing for two slots at the Nationals. Starting on Sunday, December 27, 2015, it was a very tense set of days, but on Tuesday morning they were able to win their final game and get the second spot.

They will now be "Massachusetts 2" in the list of qualified teams for the Junior Nationals.

The "Massachusetts" name comes from the state where the skip (captain) of the team is located. In our case the skip, Rebecca Rodgers, curls out of the Petersham Curling Club in Petersham, MA, as does our daughter Chloe. The other two girls curl out of the Cape Cod (MA) Curling Club and the Nashua (NH) Country Club.

WE LEAVE ON FRIDAY, JANUARY 15! So this is all happening in a whirlwind of activity in a short time.

If you'd like to follow along with their activities, we've set up a Facebook page at:

https://www.facebook.com/TeamRodgersCurling

It is a public page, so you do NOT need a Facebook account to view the page.

At the Junior Nationals, they will be up against some of the best Juniors teams in the USA, and with the Junior age range being ages 12-21 ... and our girls being 13-15... there are definitely some teams out there with more experience. (And the "High Performance" team in the list is composed of top players chosen by USA Curling and groomed for Olympic competition.) Regardless, the girls are looking forward to playing against these teams and getting experience playing at a national level! It's going to be great!

Of course, as a parent (and in my case also the team coach), there's also the cold, hard reality that it costs a good bit of money to move 8 people (4 players and their parent chaperones) from New England to western Minnesota and feed and house them for 9 days! In fact, our budget shows that it's going to be between $9,000 and $10,000!

We parents are going to make this amazing opportunity happen for these girls however we can... but this is definitely a financial stretch. As a new team[1], we don't yet have any kind of sponsorship, but we're looking into seeing what we can do. I also set up my first ever GoFundMe page at:

https://www.gofundme.com/teamrodgerscurling

And we've had wonderful generosity from so many people that have already helped push us past the 25% mark! It's so great to see so many people wanting to help send the girls to Nationals! (And more donations are definitely welcome!) We are so incredibly appreciative of all the donations to date, as well as the many other ways that people have offered to help.

Now... the countdown is on... in 11 days we'll be on planes to Minnesota for an amazing week of curling!!

P.S. Our daughter Chloe is on the right end of the photo. For those who know curling, she plays "Lead" on the team. (And the photo is arranged in order of Skip, Vice, Second and Lead.)

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[1] This is the first year these four girls have been curling together as a team. However, they have each been curling for 5-8 years and one of them (Rebecca) was an Alternate on a Nationals team last year and three of them (Rebecca, Anna and Elizabeth) were in the regional playdowns last year as part of another team. All four of them have been playing on teams in youth tournaments (bonspiels) for the past five years, very often playing against each other! So it's fun to have them all together on one team.

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An audio commentary is also available:

Never Give Up

Never. Give. Up.

I was vividly reminded of that lesson last night in the championship game of the Men's Curling League at the Petersham Curling Club where I play. Our team, which had played extremely well together all year, had made it through the playoffs to be in the final championship game against another excellent team.

This was it. The end of the long curling season and a chance to have our names inscribed on the league trophy at the club.

After 5 of the 8 ends (think "innings" in baseball or "periods" in hockey), both teams were tied. Then the other team scored 2 points in the 6th end. Then they stole 1 point in the 7th. So we were going into the final 8th end three points down with a score of 7-4.

We thought we were doomed. It was highly unlikely that there was any way out. Scoring 3 points to tie was going to be extremely difficult based on how well the other team was playing.

In my mind, I had mostly given up.

But part of why I enjoy the sport of curling is the degree of skill it takes... but also the unpredictability of what can happen. A piece of lint on the ice could cause a rock to go off in an unplanned direction. A change in humidity can make the ice slower or faster than it was just a few minutes ago. The skip can call the sweepers on too early or too late and have the rock end differently than planned. The person throwing the rock can throw it wrong... missing the line he/she is supposed to hit or throwing it too hard or too light.

So many variables.

The 8th end began as you would expect. The other team fired their first rock through the rings... just got it out of there. They were up by 3 points - all they wanted to do was knock rocks out and make sure we couldn't score any points.

But then things happened. We made some good shots. They missed a couple of shots. We missed some shots. They made some good shots... the game went on.

But in the end we came down to the final stone of the opposing skip with 4 of our stones sitting in the rings. You can see a photo above that I took of the way it was set up. Our skip had his final stone to throw, too, but we expected the opposing skip to simply come down and sit on our rock that was in the blue "four-foot" ring. Either that or hit our rock out and roll over behind the other rocks where it would have been extremely difficult to get to his rock. It was a comparatively "easy" shot and the opposing skip had made shots like this all the time.

Looking at it I thought we were done.

But... the other skip's final stone was too light! Even with the frantic sweeping of the team the rock didn't make it down to the rings and instead hit the rocks in the front.

Unbelievably... we had just scored 4 points to win!!!

Our skip didn't even have to throw his final rock.

We sat there with our mouths open... uncomprehending at first.

And THEN we celebrated!

Never. Give. Up!

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An audio commentary is also available:

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My Four Words For 2015

As I have done for the past several years now, I like to start off on January 1 with a post about a few "words" that represent aspirations I have for the year. As I did last year for 2014, I'm going to write about four words for 2015, as compared to the three words I wrote about in 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010. And while I've been doing this for my own reasons, I should credit Chris Brogan for starting the idea of writing in this way publicly many years ago. So here is my current thinking for 2015...

ESSENTIALS

Over the past six months or so I've been giving a great amount of thought to what exactly I want to be doing - in many different aspects of my life. Part of that came about as part of looking at my role within the Internet Society and thinking about what makes the most sense for my particular skills and interests. But perhaps a larger part came about in some of the reading and discussions my wife and I have been having around what many call "minimalism" or variations on that theme. Basically... looking at how to do fewer things better. We only have so many hours in the day and we choose how we are going to spend those hours... and we choose what we give our attention to. My wife's ongoing experience with cancer treatments has certainly changed our overall perspective and made us think about what is most important to us.

This year I want to continue that effort into distilling things down to what are really the "essentials" in my life upon which I wish to focus. This may mean focusing more and putting aside some side projects... or admitting that some project ideas may just never happen - and that's okay.

To go back to that wonderful quote from the poet Mary Oliver:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

And even more so... what will I do - or not do - in pursuit of that?

BOOKS

Given that my last book was published four years ago back in 2011, I do feel a bit of a desire to have another book come out some time soon. An obvious candidate is to pitch O'Reilly on doing a Second Edition of Migrating Applications to IPv6 given that a lot has changed in four years and that there is much more that can be said about IPv6 based on the deployment experience to date. I also have several ideas for books in the telephony/telecom/VoIP space.

I also have several ideas for books outside the pure technology space... more in the public relations / marketing / social media space. And there are some other ideas I have floating around my head...

Ideas for books are easy... it's making the time to create the book that is the challenge! I'd like to see what I can do in 2015 to at least get some book project underway.

HEALTH

"Health" was actually one of my three words back in 2010 and as I noted in my 2011 post I went far in 2010 dropping 45 pounds and starting to get into running. Last year "running" was one of my words and I'm now pretty confident that running is part of my lifestyle and just part of what I do.

But... now this year I need to focus a bit broader than just running. It's been a while since I've had a physical and there are some other health issues I'd like to address. It's time to do a bit more to ensure I'm around for the long term.

CURLING

This is not so much an aspiration as an admission that this year may more heavily involve the sport of curling that I enjoy so much. There are two aspects here. First, my soon-to-be-13-year-old daughter enjoys curling and shows some interest in doing more competitively. IF she does that (and it's still an "if"), that will set us on a potential path of bonspiels (tournaments) and camps that may set the tone for much of our family activity for the year. We'll see. Second, I very much want to see this be the year when we start making some headway with starting up the Monadnock Curling Club and looking at bringing the sport of curling to our region of New Hampshire.

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That's what I'm thinking about right now for this year... I have a sense that 2015 could be a big year on a number of different fronts... we'll have to see how it turns out.

Meanwhile... Happy New Year! May 2015 be a great year for you!

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An audio version of this post is available:

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Watching Live Curling At 65mph on I-91

Today was an amazing testament to the power of today's mobile Internet. We traveled to Connecticut today to visit some friends and family, but we also wanted to watch the live video stream of one of the youth in our Petersham Curling Club youth program playing in the national Playdowns up in Rochester, NY. So, while my wife drove I set up my iPhone as a personal hot spot and used my iPad to display the live video stream from the Playdowns.

It worked out great... and was just amazing to think about!

Some thoughts via audio:

https://soundcloud.com/danyork/tdyr-207-an-amazing-day-of-the

No Adults! An Awesome Aspect of Youth Curling Games

Today I was reminded of one of the truly awesome and wonderful aspects of youth curling bonspiels (tournaments) - when the kids go through the door out onto the ice, the game is ENTIRELY up to *them*.

No adults are allowed out on the ice. No coaches. No parents. No one.

Just the youth.

Unlike other youth team sports there are no coaches helping call the shots or determine the flow of play. There is no one to consult with. (Although we are nearby if there is a rules question that needs addressing or if there are safety issues.) From the initial start with a shaking of hands and a coin toss all the way to the end... it is entirely up to the kids.

The strategy. The scoring. The flow of the game. The making of the shots. The interpretation of the rules.

All of it... by them.

Of course we as coaches work with them to teach them all the different aspects of the sport and to prepare them for the games.

But when they go through that door... it is entirely up to them!

We are left to just watch from behind the glass... to celebrate... and sometimes to cringe... but there is absolutely nothing we can do but watch!

Pretty awesome for the kids!

Beginning A Season Of Youth Curling Bonspiels

Tonight begins a new era in our lives as parents as our 12-year-old daughter competes for the first time in a curling "bonspiel" (tournament) that will go all weekend (or, at least, we hope so!). Over the past three years that she has been involved with the Petersham Curling Club youth program in nearby Petersham, MA, she's been in the "Little Rocks" program where she has played in typically three or four one-day bonspiels around New England.

But now that she has reached the age of 12 she is in the "Juniors" program... and they play at a much more serious level and in events that take a much greater amount of time!

The event this weekend is the Broomstones Junior Bonspiel at the Broomstones Curling Club in Wayland, Massachusetts, about two hours away from where we live. She's on a team with three other youth with whom she has been playing for three years. For those who know curling teams she'll be playing the "second" position in the team. (It's the second person of four to throw stones for a team.)

The games are full 8-end games, which means they'll be on the ice for a full two hours! Their schedule right now is:

• Friday, Nov 21:
  • 7:15pm
• Saturday, Nov 22:
  • 8:30am
  • 1:00pm
  • 6:30pm

The bonspiel is arranged in a series of brackets with the outcome determining who will play in the playoffs and finals on Sunday. We're certainly hopeful that the team will do well enough to be in the games on Sunday.

I'm excited for her... and as a parent I'll be there on the sidelines cheering her team on! (I'll also be posting updates and a few photos to the Petersham Youth Curling Facebook page.)

And then, yes... we have probably 3 or 4 more of these all-weekend events coming up over the course of the winter, along with some one-day events, too.

Let the curling season begin! :-)

Heading To A "Junior Curling Camp" This Weekend

About this time tomorrow I'll be down in Warminster, Pennsylvania, stepping onto the ice to help out with coaching in a "Junior Curling Camp".

Yes, curling... that winter sport.

In July. :-)

And yes, I'm excited! I'm taking two vacation days to bring my 12-year-old daughter Chloe down to this Junior Curling Camp sponsored by the Grand National Curling Club (GNCC), the organization that helps coordinate the sport of curling along the eastern coast of the USA.

Chloe absolutely loves the sport and has been curling for the past three years in the Petersham Curling Club youth curling program down in Petersham, MA, about 45 minutes south of where we live in Keene, NH. This past year she was a skip (captain) for one of our Petersham "Little Rocks" teams (ages 7-11) and did quite well in a couple of bonspiels (tournaments).

Now as a 12-year-old she'll be going into the "Juniors" program and playing at a more serious level with kids ages 12 up to 21-ish. When we were talking earlier this year about what to do this summer, this curling camp rose right to the top of her choices. :-) So we're heading down to join 31 other kids from around the region for what should be a couple of pretty intense days. It starts tomorrow (Thursday, July 31, 2014) afternoon and goes through Sunday mid-day. Lots of practice sessions, individual coaching, classroom work and some games.

The fun part for me is that I also get to join in the action as a coaching assistant. The camp will have some high-level coaches and instructors from the US Curling Association and from national teams, but they invited other club coaches to help... and I jumped right in. I'm very much looking forward to learning a great deal over the next few days from the other coaches that I can bring back to our Petersham CC youth program, as well as for the Monadnock Curling Club effort we are trying to start up in Keene.

So that's the plan... curling... in July... in Pennsylvania! :-)

Video: WCVB's "Chronicle" Shows Petersham Curling Club

Here's a fun little video piece about curling... Boston's WCVB TV station as part of their "Chronicle" show did a segment where Petersham, Mass., was their "mystery town". In the third segment they show the Petersham Curling Club where I curl on Tuesday nights in the Men's League and coach the "Little Rockers" on Saturday mornings. The curling portion is after the part about the monastery (which I've always wondered about since I drive right by it to get to the curling club) and a piece about a local B&B.

Very cool to see and I hope some folks in the region will come on over to the PCC to try out curling!

P.S. Curling also got a brief view in the fourth segment where the "mystery town" was revealed to be Petersham. (Pronounced "Peter's ham".)

Youth Curling Open House - Fri, Dec 28, 1-3pm - Petersham, MA

Would your kids (or you if you are ages 5-18) like to try out the sport of curling? If so, if you live in north central Massachusetts or southwest New Hampshire, you will have an opportunity tomorrow to see what curling is all about at:

Youth Curling Open House
Friday, December 28, 2012 from 1-3pm
Petersham Curling Club, Petersham, MA

Curling is a fun team sport that is open to pretty much anyone to be able to play. I play in an adult league on Tuesday nights and my 10-year-old daughter (pictured) plays in the youth curling on Saturday mornings. It's about a 45-minute drive for us from Keene, NH, but it's worth it to play on good ice and learn the sport.

You are welcome to come by tomorrow and try it out. The open house is free and directions are available on the Petersham Curling Club website.

If you can't make it tomorrow but are interested in staying up on future events like this, we also have a Facebook page for the Petersham Youth Curling that you can "Like" and stay connected.

We'd welcome any youth who would like to join us on the regular Saturday mornings... it's a great amount of fun!