JAPANESE RINK HAS ALBERTA CONNECTION
It will be a ‘Battle of Alberta’ when two Asian rinks compete
It’s only right if China is coached by a man from Edmonton, that Japan should be coached by a man from Calgary.
“Yeah,” said J.D. Lind. “Battle of Alberta. Final draw of the round robin on Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Ford World Curling Championship.”
Edmonton’s Marcel Rocque, the former Ferbey Four lead, is in his second go-round as coach of China. Calgary’s Lind is in his first year as the national coach of Japan. So how exactly does one go about scoring that job? Connections.
“I curled with Charlie Thomas and Brock Virtue when I was young. I aged out. So I coached them in their last year of junior in 2007, the year they won the World Juniors,” said Lind.
“They were 20 and I was 21. I had my coaching levels so I coached them. After that, teams started to ask so I continued to do it on sort of a volunteer basis.”
While still playing with Thomas and Virtue, Lind coached Nadine Chyz in two Canadian juniors and ended up coaching Olympian Shannon Kliebrink to the Scotties.
“Then I worked 10 years with Paul Webster, the national developmental coach,” said Lind. “Paul turned out to be my connection to Japan. They were looking for a Canadian coach and he gave them a list of names. I interviewed. That was just before Sochi when I went over there.”
At that point, he coached just the women. The men weren’t on the map in curling and thus didn’t qualify for enough Olympic funding in Japan. But that all changed when they managed to make it into the Worlds last year.
While the Japanese women have made it into every edition of the Olympics, the men have never reached even one since they had the host team spot for Nagano ’98.
Having finished fourth last year, it looks like four or five wins in Edmonton would get them a 2018 Olympic spot.
“Men’s curling in Japan has always been a distant second to the women. The women get all the coverage. The women get all the money. All the fans know the women’s team but don’t know the men’s team.
“The men’s team has had the goal for a long time to become the first Japanese men’s team to qualify for the Olympics since the host team in Nagano. That’s the underlying storyline.”
If sometime in the middle of the week you see Kosuke Morozumi throwing his broom in the air and hugging his teammates, you’ll know what happened.
Kosuke, the lead, is the brother of skip Yusuke Morozumi.
“Kosuke, the lead, speaks English. He’s won the sportsmanship award two years in a row. He’s really outgoing. The other guys are more quiet and reserved. All nice guys. But quiet.”
The whole team has curled together for 13 years. They’re from Karuizawa, a Banff-like town an hour outside of Nagano where curling was held when it became a full-time Olympic sport.
“They are part of the legacy of the Nagano Games. The facility remained. They are a product of that facility. They’ve had the same coach for 13 years. She’s the mother-in-law of the second. She remained the team coach. I became the national coach,” said Lind, who has had the team in Edmonton training since last Tuesday with a 10-day camp at the Ellerslie facility.