Jock Scott on the endangered sport of outdoor curling

There’s strong hope this winter that the ice will be right for the Baxter Cup, New Zealand’s oldest sporting trophy. 

The Naseby-based cup is for outdoor curling, yet bonspiels (curling tournaments) are increasingly threatened by climate change. They’re no longer even held in the sport’s birthplace of Scotland and the last Baxter Cup was held here in 2017.

Maniototo farmer Jock Scott is heavily involved in all things ice. Naseby Curling Council secretary, Scott is also widely considered New Zealand’s longest practising Scottish piper. 
 
It’s a big weekend in Naseby. Indoors, the finals of the national men and women’s curling championships are on Sunday and the public curling, luging and skating season has just opened. 

An Olympic sport, curling is a 500-year-old game, that has no umpires, where teams are supposed to keep their own score and own up to their own mistakes while being constantly polite to each other. 

Maniototo farmer and Naseby Curling Council secretary Jock Scott said the game of curling has always been all about brotherhood. 

"It was brought here by the Scottish gold miners and because they couldn't work, they couldn't slush or anything like that, because the water was frozen, they had to find other things to do," he said.

And now teams from across the Naseby Curling Council region are set to compete in the Baxter Cup, New Zealand's oldest sporting trophy. 

While the sport can be played indoors, curling requires natural ice that needs to be thickened by spraying water at regular intervals. 

Scott said playing the game in the open, despite options of playing indoors, was a matter of preserving an ancient sport.

There are strong hopes the ice will be right for this year's tournament, which was being increasingly threatened by climate change, among other issues. 

"I think, in a way, it became a bit of regulatory with traffic control, and probably health and safety with people walking on frozen ponds, and that sort of things.

"But it is getting more difficult to actually hold these events," Scott said.

He hoped the Baxter Cup tournament would be held in Naseby on Monday, as the weather had been good and there was "perfect ice" to hold it.