New inter-regional qualifying process for 2012 Canadian Direct Insurance BC Men’s Curling Championship

Curl BC is pleased to announce a new inter-regional qualifying process for the 2012 Canadian Direct Insurance BC Men’s Curling Championship to be held at the Parksville Curling Club, February 8-12, 2012.

The past four open qualifying events have now been eliminated and the 16 provincial berths will now be awarded as follows:

• 1 berth to the Defending Champion
• 1 berth to top BC-CTRS Points Leader
• 10 berths to 5 interregional events
       * Kootenays – Regions 1 & 2
       * Thompson / Okanagan – Regions 3,4,7
       * North – Regions 5,6
       * Island – Region 8-10
       * Lower Mainland – Region 11
• 4 berths to an Open Qualifying Event

In order for each inter-regional playdown to receive two berths, they must have 8 or more entries. If an event has only 4-7 teams enter, they will receive one berth and the remaining berth will be reallocated. If a playdown has less than 4 entries, it will be cancelled and teams will be required to enter one of the other inter-regional events. Remaining berths will be reallocated to either the inter-regional event with the most entries and/or the open qualifying event.

This change comes as a result of an on-going playdown review being conducted by Curl BC to ensure that all respective playdowns meet the needs of the changing face of curling in BC. The intent of this inter-regional movement is to increase the number and caliber of teams competing by over-coming BC’s geographical challenges.

This change will only apply to the BC Men’s playdowns, therefore the 2012 Scotties BC Women’s Curling Championship presented by Best Western will remain a 10-team round-robin with page playoff format, and four open qualifying events.

The top men’s teams in BC will battle for the title and a berth into the 2012 Tim Hortons Brier in Saskatoon, SK, March 3-11, 2012. The Canadian Direct Insurance BC Championship semi-final and final games will be televised on Shaw TV & Shaw Direct.

The BC Men’s Curling Championship has produced four national championship teams skipped by Frenchy D’Amour (Trail – 1948), Lyall Dagg (Vancouver – 1964), Rick Folk (Kelowna – 1994) and Greg McAulay (Royal City – 2000).