News Elite 10

By Emma Miskew

Getting to be a part of a unique event such as the Elite 10 was an experience I’ll never forget.

We’ve played in all the women’s Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling events this year, where the rules are consistent from event to event. The five-rock rule is in effect, which we love, but otherwise it’s the same curling format we’re used to playing in most competitions.

We went into the Elite 10 knowing that there would be some different rules we’d have to get used to … 1) no stopwatches; 2) no changing broom heads throughout the entire event; and 3) match play (skins) format, where in order to get a point (skin), you have to take two when you have hammer or steal when you don’t.

The match play format basically guarantees that every game will have lots of rocks in play as you don’t have to worry about giving up a big end; every end is only worth one point no matter how many rocks are in play and end up scoring. We knew some of the rules were going to be challenging to get used to, and then add in playing against the men who make a ton of shots … we had no doubt that we were going to be in tough!

In the Grand Slam series, we get to travel all across Canada to various locations to play. For the Elite 10 event, we were lucky to get to go to Victoria. From Ottawa, it’s quite the trip out there, so we went a bit earlier to enjoy a couple of days of touring around before the event started. What a beautiful city and the weather was fantastic!

Since we were not from the home province and, in fact, from far across the country, we were so surprised and pleased that the crowd treated us like the home team in every one of our games. It was such an amazing experience — people of all ages made signs and cheered every time we made a shot. There were young girls there for every draw watching intently as we played, which was incredibly motivating. The first time we got a point on the board I got goosebumps from the crowd erupting in applause; it was so nice to have so many people supporting us during those tough games.

At first I thought that playing in a men’s event would be a no-pressure situation, given that the men wouldn’t want to lose to us and we had nothing to lose, but that really wasn’t the case. I felt more pressure in these games than I have in a lot of the games I’ve played in the past, wanting so badly to prove that the gap between the men and the women in curling wasn’t that big.

Well, there is definitely a gap, which is most evident in the men’s sweeping effectiveness. It took us a game to realize that we couldn’t take the same line as the men if we wanted to get by any guards, even when we threw the rock to run pretty straight. In our first game, we crashed almost every guard by following the lines that Team Epping were taking. These guys are just so strong and good at ­sweeping, and can hold the rock for far longer than we can. It was impressive to see. Even the smaller guys with whom we thought our sweeping would compare favourably were super effective with their brooms. Once we realized that we needed to take a completely different line from them, we started to make more shots out there!

We went into the Elite 10 with different goals than we normally have. We knew it would be tough to beat any of these teams, so we were just trying to focus on making some shots and applying pressure. Once we got there, it was hard to remember those goals and not think of winning, especially when we actually had chances to do so in some of our games. Winning that one game, and making a bit of curling history, meant way more than I ever thought it would. The event all in all was a fantastic and eye-opening experience for our team, and we are so grateful to have had the opportunity to play in it.­