It is the only one of its kind and it's the newest teaching component of the Cargill Training Centre at the Morris Curling Club.

The first robotic curling rock thrower in the world was unveiled last Friday.

"It's a day that we didn't think would ever come. When we started this dream we didn't think it could ever happen because it had never been done," said Lorne Hamblin who along with his wife Chris are Level 4 NCCP Olympic coaches who volunteer their time to manage and teach at the Cargill Training Centre. "When we started testing on September 25th it was so accurate. It's so wonderful to see a machine that can throw a rock and you can say to the kids, 'Do your best technically and then figure out what sweeping can do.'"

The rock thrower will enhance many training aspects of curling. It has the ability to throw accurately and consistently, various weights - from guards to draws, to light weight hits to peels and even speeds beyond the norm of most curlers.

"It's pretty exciting," said Phil Bernardin who is the owner of Eascan Automation Inc. It was his team of engineers who took the idea and after some revisions, created the model that is now in use at the Cargill Training Centre. "I see a lot of that from every day at work I guess, like several motion controls, so it’s not new technology for me but seeing it in this application is very unique. I'm a curler. I'm not very good but seeing this consistency is kind of a dream come true. I've always thought about it for many years and actually seeing it come to reality is pretty cool."

Connie Laliberte is the High Performance Director for CurlManitoba who won one World Championship and three Canadian titles during her Hall of Fame curling career.

"When I was playing, this would have been like a dream come true to me," said Laliberte after Friday's news conference. "To have all this equipment and technology as well as the knowledge of the instructors too. I think that we would have developed a lot more at that time. Who's to say how much more we would have done. I don't know, but to have it all in one facility, I mean that's awesome. This way you come to one place and you have all this equipment to work with. It's only going to make you better whether that's an ice technician, curler, coach, instructor - it’s awesome."

 



"It's an innovation unlike anything I could have ever imagined would happen," added Curling Canada chair Resby Coutts. "Over too many years in the sport of curling I have seen half a dozen different attempts to create a rock throwing device. The potential for it is huge and it's been recognized for a long time the things you could do if you could do it. Obviously computer technology allows you to do things that other attempts failed. Computer technology allows something to happen that has huge potential for all kinds of different kinds of training purposes."

The Cargill Training Centre is equipped with a 55 inch on-ice TV connected to a computer with cameras for instant playback. It also has several lasers, ipads and training gates. These are being constantly used to help with the curlers deliveries and to a lesser degree their sweeping. The rock thrower is one more tool in the tool box to help with training.

"The whole club is just excited about innovation and the advancements we've made," said Morris Curling Club president Brian Recksiedler. "Our membership is up. The Cargill Training Centre, this rock launcher, everything has just been overwhelming actually. As you know most clubs, and we were the same five years ago, we were struggling hard. We're still not out of the woods but things are looking a lot better than they did."