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Miskew: In the life of a curler

By Emma Miskew

Travelling as much as we do can certainly be taxing, but there’s no arguing the fact that I am incredibly lucky to be able to travel to such beautiful locations all over Canada as well as in the world. Competitions when I was junior to those most recently have allowed me to see many places I wouldn’t otherwise have had the same opportunity to visit.

Just to name a few, we’ve competed in beautiful Salmon Arm, B.C., for our first Canadian Junior Championship; Latvia for our first Women’s World Championship; Banff, Alta., for the Skins game; and most recently, St. John’s, N.L., for the first Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling event of the season.

Some of my favourites include Whitehorse, Switzerland, Sweden and Las Vegas.

When Rachel and I were 16, we qualified to represent Ontario at the Canada Winter Games, which were held in Whitehorse, Yukon. Based on all the warm winter clothing we were given, we expected that it would be very cold in February during the Games, but little did we know how absolutely beautiful of a city we were going to. With the stunning mountains surrounding us, I (almost) forgot how cold it was!

Our World Junior Championships were held in Flims, Switzerland. Our first few days there were pretty foggy while we tried to get acclimatized and had our practices. Waking up on our third day, the fog had cleared so I opened our balcony door and was amazed at such a breathtaking view. We were right in the middle of the mountains, in a village filled with character.

We had the opportunity to take the gondola up to the top of the large ski mountain, which took over half an hour, but once at the top it was definitely worth the trip! We weren’t about to go skiing during a competition, so we just went up wearing our winter boots for walking around. As it was early in the afternoon, we didn’t think much about our timing when to head back down … but just by chance we asked when the last gondola was returning, and found out we had five minutes to catch it! It was a good thing we had asked, otherwise we would have been walking down the massive ski hill, which apparently took 45 minutes to SKI down!

Our team has participated in the Stockholm Ladies Cup in Sweden the past two years to get some experience in international competitions. We booked our flights to land a few days early not only to allow us to get used to the time difference, but also the opportunity to be tourists before the competition started. We were able to visit Old Town, which consists of boutiques and restaurants on narrow cobblestone streets, take a boat tour to explore the islands of Stockholm, and go see some famous museums, including the one dedicated to the band ABBA.

Stockholm boat tour! #curling

A photo posted by Team Homan (@team_homan) on

This year, we saw great reviews online for a place called Room Escape, where you get locked in a room for an hour with your team and have to solve a mission before the hour is up. We ended up doing this challenge twice, and as it turned out we couldn’t save the world from a zombie apocalypse, but we were skilled thieves as we were able to rob the diamonds from the bank with time to spare!

Seeing as the curling season typically goes from September to April, the majority of our travel is during the winter months to cold destinations. That’s why it was so amazing a couple of years ago when the Continental Cup was held in Las Vegas, where we got to travel somewhere warm in January to curl. This super cool location for a curling event attracted a lot of curling fans — the arena was packed every draw. We had the luxury of sitting by the pool between games and walking outdoors in January to our games in a t-shirt! Nothing like combining a vacation and a curling event in one!

All in all, I am so grateful to have been able to compete in places all over Canada and several around the world. I can’t wait to see where curling brings me next, and I couldn’t ask for three better teammates to travel with!