Briane Harris opens up on year away from curling, dismissal from Team Einarson, joining Team Cameron
Although Briane Harris could sense the writing was on the wall, she was still shocked when she found out she was no longer part of Kerri Einarson’s team.
Harris detailed her year away from curling while under provisional suspension for a positive doping test, having her ban lifted and being cleared of all wrongdoing, her dismissal from Team Einarson and her future playing third with skip Kate Cameron on Friday’s episode of The Broom Brothers podcast.
The 33-year-old from Petersfield, Man., told host John Cullen that through the process she was under the impression her spot on Team Einarson was assured, however, she felt she was receiving mixed messages and her gut feeling was she was no longer on the team. She asked to meet with them to discuss her fate.
“I’m happy I pushed that team meeting because I feel like it was going that way anyway,” Harris said. “Then I was able to get on the team I’m on now, which I’m super excited to be on. Considering the circumstances of it being before an Olympic Trials year and the end of a quad, I was really nervous that I wasn’t going to get on a team that I either wanted to be on or I wasn’t going to get on a team at all, so when Kate reached out I was super pumped.”
She added: “I’m happy that I pushed it even if it didn’t end up how I wanted it to and I got kicked off the team because of it, whatever, but at least it put me in a position to be on the team I’m on now and a contending team that I see a lot of potential in.”
Harris captured four consecutive Scotties Tournament of Hearts titles from 2019-22 while playing lead with Team Einarson. It was on the eve of last year’s Scotties, as the team was aiming for a historic five-peat, when Harris was informed she had tested positive for Ligandrol, a sustance banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, in an email from World Curling.
She shrugged it off initially as the email looked “scammy” and went with her teammates to the Calgary Flames game that night, however, she knew it was serious once she received another email the next morning.
“I thought it was a mistake, obviously, because I wasn’t doping,” said Harris, who also captured four Grand Slam of Curling titles with Team Einarson. “I looked through the whole thing and I’m like, ‘It says I’m charged with doping?’ … I was so confused. I was just like, ‘What is happening?'”
Harris told her husband the name of the substance and although it didn’t click with him at first, he looked up a supplement he had been taking and believed she might have gotten it through him somehow.
“It was just something he could buy just off the internet, so he didn’t think anything of it,” she said. “We’ve always been taught that you could only get a doping offence from something you ingest, you’re in charge of what you take in. He never thought anything of it. I never thought to ask him what he takes. I thought he just took supplements, whatever, like anybody else does, and I knew that I didn’t take anything. I don’t even take any supplements.
“It’s ironic that it happened to me because I was so scared of it happening that I never took like protein powder. I would barely take like Advil and Tylenol. I wouldn’t take anything, so that it happen to me, I was like, ‘Wow.'”
Alternate Krysten Karwacki stepped in at lead alongside Einarson, third Val Sweeting and second Shannon Birchard. The team received an exemption to add Karlee Burgess, formerly with skip Chelsea Carey, at second this year as Birchard is recovering from a knee injury.
Harris appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport but couldn’t practise or even so much as set foot in a curling club while she remained under provisional suspension. During that time, Harris had moments where her interest in curling wavered.
“I obviously didn’t watch as much curling as I normally would, probably, but I still watched more than I thought I was going to considering the circumstances,” she said. “It was really hard to watch because it was like a reality check every time an event would be on that I wasn’t there again. … But I would try to watch, just keeping my curling brain going with strategy and everything and trying to see what was going on.
“I feel so out of it right now still even, not knowing what’s happening with this new Broomgate thing going on or just stuff that’s been happening since I’ve been gone. I’m sure lots of little things have been talked about that I just don’t know about, so I’m excited to learn about all that when I finally get to play again. It’s just difficult, but I tried to make myself do it just to stay in the know.”
Still, Harris would like to say she never believed her competitive curling career was over even when doubt crept into her mind.
“I was always like, ‘No, don’t let this beat you. Don’t let this make you want to quit just because something crappy happened you couldn’t control.’ But on my down days, sometimes I would be like, ‘What am I even going back to?’ It was hard,” she said. “I know a lot of people don’t know what to say but a lot of people didn’t reach out, which at the same time I get it. They don’t know if they want to say the wrong thing or if they’re bugging me or whatever. That part was really hard. That made me question things sometimes. I’m like, I’m going back and not very many people reached out anyway and it would be weird to be around those people again.
“Stuff like that would sometimes cross my mind but then at the same time, I know I love curling. I wanted to go back so bad and I was doing all that during the court case to be back, so I’m like, well, this would all be for nothing and all of this effort if I didn’t play. … I just felt like I still have so much left in me, and I didn’t want to let this get me down and squash me. There’s so many other things that I’ve dealt with in my past that didn’t stop me from playing, so I just didn’t want this to be another thing.”
It wasn’t until January, almost a full year since she was last on the ice, when Harris was informed she won her appeal and was cleared to play. Harris, who was five months pregnant at the time, went out and practised on the ice that day and all through the week preparing for her return.
“I obviously wanted to play, and I knew I could, and I had played pregnant before so it wasn’t like an unknown for me,” she said. “I knew I was able to do it, and I had felt so good from the practices too. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I feel really good.’ I’m able to play if they want me to.”
The news came right at the start of the WFG Masters in Guelph, Ont. Harris was open to even coming out and serving as Team Einarson’s alternate if it meant being with them again.
“I just wanted to be in curling again, doing it again, so I was open to whatever option that was there for me,” she said. “Obviously wanting to play, first and foremost, I’m competitive. It would be crazy for me not to want to play, but I was open to all options of being on the team in any capacity pretty much.”
The team met after the WFG Masters with Harris thinking they would be discussing their lineup for the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, however, she said they had already come to a decision without her. Team Einarson said in a statement they would remain with the same lineup “to maintain consistency.”
“We would like to reiterate our happiness in hearing Briane’s news that she is cleared and can return to playing the sport she loves,” the team said. “Due to uncertainty of not knowing the timing and final result of Briane’s appeal, we had locked in our fifth player for the Scotties before hearing her news.”
Lauren Lenentine, who also previously played with Team Carey, came on board as alternate for the Scotties Tournament of Hearts as Einarson captured the silver medal, losing to Rachel Homan in the final.
Although the lineup was just for the Scotties, Harris could sense it was “kind of weird.'”
“They assured me that I was still on the team but just the actions and some things that I was being told that weren’t adding up, I was starting to get a little suspicious about what was going on,” she said.
“When the decision became final later on, I kind of saw it coming already. I don’t know why, and I never probably will.”
Harris joined Team Cameron on March 24 with Team Einarson also confirming they had parted ways.
She figures Cameron heard or suspected she wasn’t part of Team Einarson anymore and reached out as she had an open spot in her lineup for next season. Harris will move up to third as Taylor McDonald shifts to second alongside lead Mackenzie Elias.
“She could have said anything and I probably would have been in,” Harris said. “It was like this is my best option, so I was really excited, and they all seem like such great girls.”
Through it all, Harris said she learned she had more mental toughness than she thought as going through that was on a whole other level she wasn’t expecting.
“I’m proud of myself that I never gave up,” she said. “I kept working out. I kept watching games. I kept trying to keep my mind going and thinking of how we could be better, and how I could improve myself and improve the team. I guess the resilience is something that I unlocked that I didn’t know I had in me at that extent. … I’m grateful that I got through it and it was the best result that we could have hoped for.
“I’m hoping that all of that experience will just make me stronger going forward. I think I’ll be different on the ice, too. I think I’ll be so excited to be back playing and able to do what I love again that little things that used to bother me are going to be like whatever, that’s nothing. It’ll be exciting to be back on the ice again.”
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