Hey Coach: Coach Acknowledgment and Fifth Player Acknowledgment

“Hey Coach Sutter congratulations on the Stanley Cup win but would you please move aside, take the back-up goaltender with you, so we can take of picture of the team?”
Curling Rocks and Rings
Could you imagine this in another sport?  Well it happens a lot in curling at big events – when the team wins the photographers take a full team picture however they then ask for ‘the four’ and the coach and fifth player have to step aside.   Now I understand a few of these teams do not have full time coaches – a few – the rest have worked with these coaches for a number of years leading up to the big event and trust me that the majority of these coaches are working extremely hard behind the scenes to cover a lot of the detail the team does not, and should not, have to deal with.   Now in curling I can understand how the fifth may get overlooked as most teams do not carry a full time fifth player.  That said, these fifths are doing a tremendous amount of work behind the scenes during the big event to help the team out.   In my opinion this work, both on the coach’s behalf and the fifth player’s, should be recognized. Now if you look at our website sometimes we are the worst offenders .   As a national sport organization that supports coaching and coach education we should have the acknowledgment of coaches at the forefront of our publicity.  Again, this is only my opinion! Congratulations to both Coaches, Dennis Balderston of Team Bernard and Jules Owchar of Team Martin, on their unbelievable achievement this past weekend.  Congrats also goes out to fifth players Kristie Moore and Adam Enright.