Getting Down to Business

Hello all! It's been a busy competitive season and that's kept me from getting new posts out here for a while. I plan on trying to keep this more up to date now that we're just 45 days away from Vancouver!!! It's time to get down to business!

Actually, we made that assertion about a month ago and really started to put things together for our Olympic push!

After struggling through most of our early WCT season, we started to make some progress starting at the first Grand Slam in Ontario. This was a tough event and we played a number of teams that we were likely to see in Vancouver. Our record was 2-4, but we were just a couple of shots away from being 4-2. After that event we met as a team with our coaching staff and came up with a clear plan of what needed to improve in the time remaining before the Games.

From there we played in WCT events in Brooks-Alberta, Duluth-MN, and Brantford-Ontario. In each successive event we seemed to get closer and closer to playing at a top level. In fact, we started to beat some teams that many might say that we had no shot against. But we again failed to qualify for the final 8 in any of them. Missing out by just one game in most cases! Doing our best to stay positive, we moved on with the ultimate prize still in mind.

Finally a breakthrough! It was at one of our favorite events in the U.S. .... the Curl Mesabi Classic in Eveleth-MN. After a disappointing loss in our first game, we rallied and rattled off 6 wins in a row to win the Event! Our last three games were our best of the season and we feel like we're really starting to click again!

Coming off of our most successful outing of the year we headed to Green Bay for our last camp before "The Big Show". This camp involved a ton of media appearances and a trip to an elementary school to speak to some kids! What an experience! We also met with coaching staff to start finalizing plans and schedules for Vancouver. Pete Fenson's team also made the trip and agreed to scrimmage us for three games. We again had a rough start in the first game, but came back to win the next two...giving us bragging rights for the weekend! Thanks to Pete and his team for making the trip! It was a great camp and sets us up well for the last two events of our season.......both are Grand Slam WCT events in Canada, which is the level of competition we need to be seeing heading into the Games.

First up is "The National" in Guelph, ON and second is the "The BDO Open" in Winnipeg, MB. Both look to be great events and we're looking forward to surprising a few people as we head into our final stages of preparation.

I should also mention the crazy fun of being involved with many, many, media events and appearances over the last few months! At some point all of us have had newspaper or TV interviews with local and national media. Some of us have also been involved in appearances on National TV shows. It's hard to imagine it being much more fun than this, but we are all sure that in 45 days it will be!

More to come from the road....until then.....good curling!!!