Curling's advancing broom technologies, unbridled for the most part over the game's history, almost certainly need to be leashed in the near future.

That's the general feeling permeating the game's corridors after a great leap forward in brush ingenuity; an ingenuity that has led to what one noted curler referred to as an ability to guide the rock "with a joystick." It's all come to a head this season - in fact it really boiled over this past weekend - as a group of world class curlers held a meeting during a Toronto bonspiel to see what could be done to even the competitive balance and slow the arms race.

Players, officials and manufacturers are all contemplating the question: How far is too far? We may have already reached that point.

“There’s a broom head to the point where me sweeping, is more effective than Ben Hebert and Marc Kennedy sweeping together,” said Team Howard vice Wayne Middaugh. Middaugh hadn't actually used it yet, but he was going on reports from his teammates, who'd tested new brooms from their supplier, BalancePlus, last week, and then trotted them out over the weekend at the StuSells Toronto Tankard. “They said It was to the point where, on a back line weight shot that curled six feet, they could make it fall four feet. That’s ten feet different in line.”

If what Middaugh says is so - and there is lots of reliable anecdotal evidence to suggest it is - then the game of curling has entered a new era, should that kind of broom technology become the norm. But will it?

It's hard to find anyone who is convinced that'd be a good thing and it's why the players felt they needed a meeting, in Toronto.

With Howard's team using their new broom heads this weekend and with Brad Gushue's masterful performances with a similar material - from another manufacturer known as Hardline Curling - on his team's sticks this season, it has become obvious that these brushes ain't your granddad's old straw relic. (Hardline's broom head was also used by teams skipped by Reid Carruthers and Mike McEwen last season)

“We’ve fought so long to have athleticism as part of the game and if there’s almost like a Nintendo effect of being able to just guide it with a joystick then we’re taking a step back and I don’t think anybody wants that to happen,” said Nolan Thiessen, lead for the two-time defending men's national championship Team Canada Rink.

He's not alone. There are fears the new technologies at hand will quickly extinguish the need for a physical edge when it comes to this crucial part of the game while simultaneously bringing sweeping to a level where it far outstrips a curler's other abilities - aim and weight control among them.

“I’ve had quite a number of phone calls from quite a variety of players on both men’s and women’s teams expressing concern in this regard,” said Gerry Peckham, the Director of High Performance for Curling Canada. Peckham is wary of what is happening in the game this season and he admits it's a confounding one because “we don’t currently have an appropriate mechanism to deal with the situation that may well be presenting itself.”

BROOM TECHNOLOGIES HAVE LED TO GUIDED MISSILE ROCKS

New broom heads are being utilized that have dramatically altered the game and are allowing players to control rocks in ways that were never dreamed of, not even in the recent past. While leaps in technology and design have been commonplace over the years, exponential change is now taking place. The Hardline "IcePad," as it is known and now BalancePlus' new entrant in the game seem to be some kind of super weapon, enabling pro curlers to guide a rock down the ice in serpentine fashion if they like, sometimes contrary to the accepted notions of curling physics.

Whatever the advancements in the sport's sweeping technology have encompassed over the years, they've really always been about two firm principles; Holding the rock's trajectory as straight as possible and dragging the rock farther. Now, with the latest incarnation of broom wizardry, it seems you can add more to that repertoire.

"Depending on the technique you use, you can make the rock curl (more), you can make the rock slow down," said Scott Foster, the ice maker at the Oakville Curling Club, just west of Toronto. "So, there’s something going on."

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