More photos

That's it all over for another year: We witnessed lots of competitive matches, terrific shot-making (particularly the last two stones of the Boys High Road final, which saw the lead swing both ways), and a bright future for Scottish curling.

You can find photos from the 2012 event, by Andy Macpherson, on the Kinross Curling Rink facebook page. Please like the page if you haven't done so already - you'll be rewarded with unique behind-the-scenes stuff, photos from other Kinross curling events, and much more throughout the year!

2012 prize-giving photos

Boys High Road runner-up: Team Baird.

Boys High Road winner: Team Keil, won 6-4.

Boys Low Road runner-up: Team F. Thomson.

Boys Low Road winner: Team Cannon, won 5-3.

Girls High Road runner-up: Team Martin/Smith.

Girls High Road winner: Team Steven, won 8-5.

Girls Low Road runner-up: Team Paterson.

Girls Low Road winner: Team Barr, won 8-4.

Updates

The 2012 Order of Play & Groups have now been updated - please check the relevant tabs in the top menu [above] for more info.

The tabs for: From The President, Rules, Rinks, and, Thanks To, are yet to be updated for the 2012/13 season.

2012 order of play, rinks, etc

Our programme for the 2012/13 competition is still being finalised by John Swan, so until that is done, this website won't be able to display any of the important info (order of play, rinks, etc) that you are all waiting for.

Please bear with us in the meantime, and we'll get it up as soon as possible.

Renovations for 2012

Hello again,

The 21st annual Kinross Junior Classic takes place this October (Fri 5th - Sun 7th).

In preparation, I've started renovating this, the official blog, with the aim of making it even better than it was last year. Therefore if you have any comments, critiques, or suggestions, now is the perfect time to raise them.

As you may have noticed, I've already created some new pages for the top menu, which should hopefully make it easier for you to follow the fixtures, results, and standings that you are interested in.
Last year those things were all spread around separate posts, and located via a massive list of labels running down the right-hand menu. Hopefully you'll agree that this change has tidied-up the blog a fair bit!

For the blog's debut last year, we intended to bring you live scoring for all games, but a technical issue very quickly put the dampers on this. Basically, the computer in the rink office ruined the formatting in all the tables on this blog (and we don't know why!): Therefore we had to unplug the internet cable from the rink computer, temporarily plug it into Andy's 'reliable' laptop, and do all updates from that instead!
But of course, with Andy having to juggle ice work, photography, and blogging duties over the course of the weekend, live scoring just wasn't feasible. So if anyone wants to volunteer for the live-scoring updates, please do get in touch, otherwise we'll have to do without it again!

The Kinross Curling Rink facebook page witnessed a dramatic increase in visitors & likes following the Junior Classic last year, and once again will be the only source for all official photos from the event.
If you've not done so already, please 'like' the page, and you'll be rewarded with all sorts of news, links, tips, and interesting behind-the-scenes stuff.

I think that's all for just now, in the meantime, please do get in touch with any suggestions for this year's event.

Thank you and goodnight.

Well then... The weekend is over, we have found our 2011 winners, there is a selection of photos online, and the website (to the best of my knowledge) is all up-to-date.

It was a great weekend, with lots of top curling on show and a fun atmosphere both on & off the ice. Most things went to plan, and as far as I'm aware, we encountered very few problems.

Individually maintaining this site over the past week has been a big task, but one that I was willing to take-on.

There was a bizarre formatting issue with the live online scoring system, which put a slight damper on things, but aside from that, things went well, and I hope the site was useful to those of you that visited.

If nothing else, by creating the site I learnt some new html coding (website construction mumbo-jumbo) for the online scoreboards; and to see such an unexpectedly large number of online visitors has been incredible - almost 6000 pageloads since the site was created last week!

When I wasn't working on this website, or doing my Ice Tech duties with Steven, Donald, and Craig, I was often to be found rinkside with a camera, doing my best to fill-in for an absent Bob Cowan (Skip Cottage Curling).

I'd again like to send my best wishes to Bob as he recovers from "being struck down by malady" (as he put it on a post from 1st October).

This weekend was a real insight for me into the amount of hard work that Bob does for all curlers: I did his kind of work for just one weekend at my local rink (10 minutes drive from home), and was fair knackered at the end of it, yet Bob travels all across the country pretty much season-long to bring us news, results, and great photos. He is a fantastic talent and his resources are something that we shouldn't take for granted, so I'd strongly encourage his readers and/or photo borrowers to give his site a donation as some kind of thank you.

Prior to the Junior Classic weekend, I had previously photographed/filmed the odd game (or four if you count all the Stirling Summer Skins that I filmed), but an entire weekend of curling photography was something new for me.

Yes it was rather chilly sitting rinkside for 30-60 minutes at a time, and it wasn't the best vantage point for properly watching any of the games, but the on-ice atmosphere was enjoyable and somewhere amongst the many 100s of photos that I snapped each session there were some fantastic images... And yes, when I say "many 100s of photos" I do mean it: There wasn't a session where I came away with less than 200 photos! A large quantity were blurry duds heading straight for deletion, but it's better to have way too many photos than not enough good photos.

I've already put a small selection of the better photos from each day onto the Kinross Curling Rink facebook page, and I intend to add plenty more at some point in the near future - so keep watching out for those.

I'm very happy with the response I've had from some of you about the photos, and it's delightful to see several young curlers embracing my photos as their new profile picture(s) on facebook. I'd just ask (as Bob has previously done), that if you or your team are posting the photos on your facebook/blog/website/etc, could you please credit the photographer? Something along the lines of "Photo taken by & copyright of PHOTOGRAPHERS NAME HERE" would suffice, although including a web link would be nice too. (Well done Team McWilliam for doing so already!)

I think I've covered everything, and rambled on for far too long now, so finally: If you were at the rink, as a spectator or competitor, I hope you enjoyed the weekend and had a good experience. It's a long time away, but here's to a successful 2012 Junior Classic!

Thank you and goodnight,

Andy Macpherson

(Webmaster, Photographer, Ice Tech).