Source: Candace Woodside, Southwest Booster, March 19, 2016
It’s been seven years since a Canadian skip hoisted the championship trophy for the World Women’s Curling title, but Chelsea Carey is ready for the challenge.
The Ford World Women’s Curling Championship begins Saturday at the Credit Union iPlex in Swift Current, and Carey says understandably, there’s some pressure, playing in front of a Canadian crowd.
“You sort of can’t think about that, it’s there – it’s like hockey in Canada, everybody expects Canada to win gold, it’s just how it is, but we can’t do anything but go and try to play like we did at the Scotties, and kind of go from there. So we spend a lot of time trying to get into that headspace cause it’s easy to let that get to you but you can’t worry about that stuff you just gotta go out and play.”
©Candace Woodside
Carey and her teammates Amy Nixon (3rd), Jocelyn Peterman (2nd), lead Laine Peters, and alternate Susan O’Connor arrived in Swift Current Thursday afternoon and hit the ice for a practice session on Friday. Carey says the team has enjoyed playing in smaller communities since the rink came together in 2015.
“We play in the Slam even in Yorkton, we played there the last couple of years and it’s always the best Slam event because the crowds are insane and the building’s packed and it’s just a lot of fun to play when that’s the case. So when our families all tried to get tickets [for the Worlds] and we saw that it was basically sold out we were like, ‘Oh okay! Now we’re talking!’ So that’ll be incredible. That’s all you want – all you really get to experience at stuff like this is the venue, you don’t get to see anything or do anything so you just want the venue to be a great experience and it will be. So we’re really excited about that.”
The Carey rink recently shared the podium with Team Canada’s representative from the 2010 edition of the World Championships, also in Swift Current, when skip Jennifer Jones took the bronze at the Scotties in Grande Prairie, while Carey won the right to wear the Maple Leaf for the first time in her career.