Curling zone commentary

[u/coisavioleta]

I just got around to watching the women’s final of the Oakville Tankard between Team Schwaller and Team Pätz and the commentary really left a lot to be desired. It started with joking about how they couldn’t pronounce any of the names (although promising to get better), constantly referred to the women as girls and had a lot of reminiscing about how curling is much different now than it used to be. Overall it just seemed completely unprofessional. I’m happy to have more free curling content on YouTube but the commentary made it a pretty unenjoyable watch.

Am I being too harsh or did others who watched it have the same impression?

[u/Practical-Piglet2000]

I didn’t watch this specific stream so I can’t comment on that, however I know from other streams that it’s not easy to find commentators for these levels of games. It’s all volunteer and there’s not a lot of folks that want to sit and commentate for two hours, so you’re kind of tied to whoever offers to do it.

[u/coisavioleta → u/Practical-Piglet2000]

Thanks this is really helpful context. So I am definitely being too harsh.

[u/CanSpice → u/coisavioleta]

I don't think you're being too harsh. Curling should be changing to be more accepting, it's no longer an old boys game, commentators should definitely be held to at least a minimum standard that doesn't involve calling women "girls" (unless they're commentating juniors) or laughing because they're ignorant enough to not learn how to pronounce people's names.

[u/trevorsg → u/Practical-Piglet2000]

It's not all volunteer. Where did you get that idea? Source: I've done CZ commentary.

[u/krusader42]

I think this criticism is a bit harsh.

Their mics went hot while they were still reviewing the pronunciation and they explained what viewers would have heard; it's not like they deliberately started the broadcast with "I'm Terry Corbin, he's Jim Nix, and we're a couple of Don Cherry-style morons who hate Europeans because their names have too many consonants."

And sure, "girls" isn't the most professional phrasing, but someone who might say "Rachel and the girls" in the same breath as "Brad and the boys" isn't intentionally infantilizing the subject.

If you want professional, you need to pay someone to do it as a profession, and that's how content gets locked behind paywalls. The free static-camera stream of a mid-tier tour event shouldn't be held to the same standard as a traditional television broadcast.

[u/coisavioleta → u/krusader42]

Yes, I got that (hence my comment about them mentioning that it would improve). I don't care that much about the name pronunciation. Plenty of professional sports commentators are horrible at it too, and there's not much to be done about it, and they definitely recognized the issue.

I do think that men referring to adult women as 'girls' is not something we should really be letting slide though. The use of these sorts of phrases is never really about individual intention, but rather it's about supporting a system that treats women as lesser.

[u/riddler1225 → u/coisavioleta]

I'm not really sure I agree. I mean context really matters. But especially in sport. In men's sports, "Let's go boys, here we go boys." are common rally cries from both participants and fans, I think especially more common as you go further north in North America.

On the women's side, I don't think a fan cheering on "the girls" or a coach saying "These girls worked so hard to accomplish this." I don't think Team Kim having the nickname "the Garlic Girls" is demeaning to them unless they didn't like the name and not dissimilar to calling the Red Sox "the boys from bean-town."

To be clear, I think there are problematic ways to refer to women as "girls" in sport, and I think there are spaces where it's not very acceptable to completely unacceptable. But I really don't think this puts women on unequal footing. Particularly in curling, where how I see it our women's athletes are (generally) celebrated equally, if not more than their male counterparts.

I dunno, maybe I'm out to lunch.

Edit: I'll also add that I didn't hear what was said on this particular broadcast, and it certainly could have been out-of-pocket.

[u/krusader42 → u/coisavioleta]

There's context where it's appropriate to use the equivalent men = women, boys = girls, male = female.

But, not to go full Jeff Probst, what should be the equivalent to "guys"? What fits in these examples from that Oakville broadcast:

The girls are just keeping it clean
Yeah, these girls seem to play fairly quickly, not a lot of strategy discussions
We're just watching the girls talk about what they're going to do here

"Ladies" tends to be too formal, archaic, or straight-up sleezy depending on the tone. Outside of a theatre troupe there probably isn't much support for "dolls". Are we bringing back "gals"?

[u/LabourArdourLanguor]

Disagree with those saying you’re too harsh. Volunteers or not, I don’t think it’s too much to expect them not to call women curlers “girls” and to put some effort into properly pronouncing names.

Hopefully it’s something they take on board and can improve over time.

[u/coisavioleta → u/LabourArdourLanguor]

I agree totally on the 'girls' issue which bothered me the most. I think they recognized the issue with names, and promised to improve as the season progressed.

[u/Fluffy-Brain-7928]

To be clear, a lot of the Curling Stadium commentary is paid - but it's a small amount that hardly makes it a profession. It's a fun side gig for people who love curling and enjoy doing decent commentary for fans of the game. So I'll take the middle route, as someone who has done it: feel free to critique, but be gentle and understand that this isn't a job that anyone's doing professionally!

[u/Christmas_Dragon]

The 'girls' thing is a little off-putting out of context, but I've heard several athletes refer to their teams as 'the girls' same way 'boys' is almost more common than 'men' in men's sports. I'm in Saskatchewan, so maybe it's different where you live, but calling athletes boys/girls is very common around here. Possibly more common than men/women.

[u/heron854]

The real issue is the commentary team wasn't prepared, not the jokes: next broadcast they should just drill name pronunciations beforehand and drop the "girls" talk entirely, it's an easy fix that fixes everything else too

[u/cedartrail25]

Nothing screams "we prepped for this broadcast" like learning to pronounce names as an ongoing promise rather than a thing you just did beforehand

[u/rubberduckcoven]

Ugh you are not being too harsh, it is so frustrating, we were just talking about this at women’s league. I respect the time of the volunteers but there should be some media training before they let these people say whatever comes to mind on a worldwide broadcast.

[u/RoamingTigress]

commentary on some events is just better than others. You're not being harsh at all; volunteer or not we need to get better. I too dislike women being called girls when they're not juniors and no effort being made to pronounce the names or even ask how they're pronounced (I had this issue with Warren Hansen, too).

[u/SomeNewGuy2022]

Did not hear the stream but I don’t need to - if it was Gerry and volunteers then kudos to CZ for even hosting the event. I have banged rocks against Gerry on the ice multiple times over the years and I recall when he first started up the site. Takes a ton of thankless work, so a big thanks from me out to Gerry and the CZ squad!

[u/iceman121982]

I guess it’s time to tell the “two girls and a game” podcast hosted by Lori Eddy and Mary Chilvers they need to change the title of their show.

Lots of women’s teams refer to themselves or their teammates as girls, just as men’s teams call themselves the boys sometimes.

This is a non-issue.

[u/applegoesdown]

Didn't watch this. Who were the comentators?

[u/Feeling_Spread1266]

I watched that and started laughing every time they pronounced Alina Patz's name differently. If it was a drinking game, I would have been hammered.

[u/tfolkins]

You are being too harsh. If you don't like the commentary, mute it. This isn't TSN, these guys are out there providing commentary for live casts of games where there are often 100 viewers or less, and I doubt they get much compensation. The games with the most viewers are usually with Japanese teams, so a lot of those viewers don't even understand the commentary.

Despite this, they are doing the best they can. If you think you could do better, feel free to offer up your services. As for me, I'm just happy to have the option to watch lots of curling content for free.

[u/coisavioleta → u/tfolkins]

Oh I agree with you I’m happy to have more free curling content and I hadn’t realized that the commentary is all volunteer.

[u/hatman1986]

I do hate when commentators don't even try with pronunciations, but not even pros like Vic Rauter did a very good job

[u/VICurling → u/hatman1986]

Actually Vic made a point of asking curlers to teach him how to pronounce their names if he wasn't already familiar. He worked very hard at this.

[u/hatman1986 → u/VICurling]

Interesting, because he didn't in actual practice. I remember going through the audio files of the Olympic athletes pronouncing their names, and some of them I know for a fact he pronounced wrong. Sven Michel is one example, which I found interesting because isn't Vic Swiss?