Herb Kupchik Memorial League Information

Thank you everyone for signing up for our 2026 Herb Kupchik Memorial League. We have 9 teams signed up for this league, making this the largest league in Diamond State history! An odd number of teams means every week will have one team on bye. With only 7 round robin weeks and 9 teams, that means two teams won’t have a bye. The alternative was giving three teams a bye in week 7, which just seems silly.

Bye week players can sub for free in the other games, or practice on the extra sheet. This is an 8 week league starting on 4/12 with the finals on 6/14. There is no curling on Mothers Day or the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend. We get the ice every week at 6:00pm except 5/17 it will be 6:30. We must be off ice by 8:30 (9:00 on 5/17).

Okay, now that I’ve said the word “bye” way too many times, time to meet your team.

Teams
Your team roster is displayed in the image below. Please confirm your availability. The website does not record uncertainty with a “maybe” option, so if you marked a Yes or No because you are unsure of your availability rather than definitely in or out, let me know and I will update the chart. If updates before game time on Sunday of week 2 influence which teams are best suited for a bye week, the schedule may change. You can update your availability by emailing me at leagues@diamondstatecurling.org, or messaging me on slack, I can give you access to our slack channel if you don’t already have it. If your availability changes during the course of the league, let us know so bye week players know if there are sub spots available. A reminder on the #sub-requests channel on slack the day before, or the day of, is appreciated.

Team Lappert is the bye week team for Week 1, no worries there’s room for everyone available on Lappert to sub if they’d like. The weeks highlighted with a bold border are your team’s bye week, unless there’s a change before week 2.

Schedule
The first 7 weeks of the league will be round robin play. I’m calling this format “anti-pool play”. There are three pools of three teams. In no particular order those pools are:
Pool A – Sharp, Lappert, Hufe
Pool B – Vild, Donovan, Chiccino
Pool C – Wiebe, Johnson, Hercus
In round robin play in this league you will play every team except those in your pool. Anti-pool play, get it? The exception is the Week 7 wildcard game, where the top ranking team of pool C will have a bye, and the remaining two teams of pool C will play each other. We could have given all pool C teams a bye, but that seems like a waste of empty sheets.

Week 8 will be a finals week based on overall ranking after 7 weeks. If you have questions about tie breaks and stuff, check the fine print at the end of the email. The 9th ranked team will have a bye during finals week, but again can sub for free or practice if they’d like.

Alright everyone, let’s have a great Spring! See you out on the ice.
 
Good Curling,
Brian Hufe
League Coordinator

Fine (but not that fine) Print – 

Tie Breaks – Ranking will be first by record, then by ends won, then by points scored, then by heads up record. If all those tie breaks fail, the super-tie will be broken by a draw to the button contest between the skips of the tied teams. I doubt super-ties will happen, but they could.
Forfeits – If any week requires a forfeit due to attendance, the forfeiting team will be given a loss and no ends or points, the winner of the forfeited game will be given a win and the average ends scored and points scored by the rest of the teams that night. If it’s a mutual forfeit (it’s happened before), both teams will be credited a tie but no ends won and no points scored.
Subs – If a team has less than 3 players present they will have the first priority for sub assignments. Next priority will be if your team specifically recruited a sub, but bye week players get priority regardless of your recruiting efforts. After that, subs will be randomly assigned. If there are not enough subs present to make all scheduled games happen, teams of 4 may be asked to donate a player to teams that are short. However, if teams that are short are willing to play doubles, those games may proceed as a doubles game rather than shuffling players. But we will not force anyone to play doubles who isn’t comfortable. If there are enough open spots that a forfeit can be declared due to attendance but everyone who showed up can still play, that may also happen. We will do our best to avoid declaring forfeits, so if there is a way to avoid a forfeit by swapping weeks we will do that, as long as it won’t cause an attendance problem down the line.