Chelsea Carey’s team breaking up after season
Chelsea Carey’s team is the latest to announce they’ll be going separate ways for the next Olympic cycle
Carey’s Calgary-based club, which includes third Cathy Overton-Clapham, second Jocelyn Peterman and lead Laine Peters, broke the news on social media Saturday.
Team Carey, ranked second on the World Curling Tour’s year-to-date, plan to finish out the year together having already qualified for the season-ending Humpty’s Champions Cup in their hometown by winning the Meridian Canadian Open.
The news follows a flurry of shakeups in the women’s division. Winnipeg’s Kerri Einarson has a new team planned with three former skips including Val Sweeting. Tracy Fleury has taken over Einarson’s now former team. Kelsey Rocque has a new crew set featuring two of her 2015 world junior championship teammates. Michelle Englot is retiring while third Kate Cameron and lead Raunora Westcott from her Winnipeg team are sticking together.
When two-time Canadian champion Heather Nedohin stepped back from curling in 2015, third Amy Nixon, Peterman and Peters added free-agent skip Carey, who just had parted ways with her team.
Team Carey won the Alberta title and the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in their first season together to represent Canada at the 2016 world women’s curling championship. Carey qualified for the playoffs but finished off of the podium in fourth place.
They returned to the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in 2017 in the Team Canada auto-berth spot and earned bronze. Nixon, a bronze medallist at the 2006 Winter Olympics, announced her retirement immediately afterward.
Five-time national champion Cathy Overton-Clapham took over at third heading into this Olympic season. Carey topped December’s Roar of the Rings round-robin table with a stellar 8-0 run but lost 6-5 to Ottawa’s Rachel Homan in the final. They also fell 7-6 in the Alberta Scotties semifinal in January to Shannon Kleibrink on a steal in the 10th end.
Carey claimed her first career Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling title just a week after provincial playdowns defeating Englot 10-5 in the Meridian Canadian Open women’s final. The team posted a 6-1 record through the major tournament in Camrose, Alta., with their lone loss at the start of the week against Winnipeg’s Kerri Einarson. The two faced again days later in the first-ever Scotties Tournament of Hearts wild-card game and Einarson was victorious once more 7-4.
The Winnipeg-born Carey also won the Manitoba title and Scotties Tournament of Hearts bronze medal in 2014.