It’s been two great days for Chelsea Carey and her foursome from Winnipeg.
On Thursday, her team qualified for the Canadian Olympic curling trials taking place in December in Winnipeg, which means the quartet will be one of the eight women’s squads vying for a chance to represent their country in the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Through a process that involves points earned in the Canadian Team Ranking System that takes into account wins and finishes in various tournaments, Carey’s team earned the automatic entry.
“I honestly have a hard time describing it,” Carey told sportsnet.ca on Friday just after beating reigning Canadian women’s champion Rachel Homan 6-5 in the final game for each team in the round-robin portion of the $100,000 Players’ Championship at the Mattamy Athletic Centre in Toronto.
Carey has a 2-2 record and has qualified for a tiebreaker Saturday morning. Homan earned an automatic pass in the quarter-finals with a 3-1 record. The final is Sunday at 9 a.m. ET.
The Carey-Homan game was a rematch of the final of the $100,000 Rogers Masters of Curling tournament last November in Brantford, Ont., the penultimate Grand Slam event of the 2012-13 World Curling Tour. Homan won the game and became eligible for a $100,000 bonus that Sportsnet put on the line for the women’s team that won the Rogers Masters and Players’. If there is no sweep, the top three teams in total points from the two tournaments will split a $25,000 prize. The top team will collect $12,500, the runner-up $7,500 and the third-place team $5,000.
“The reality of the situation is they play a game that most teams can’t touch,” Carey said of Homan’s team. “You can’t run from her. She’s going to throw rocks at you. You’ve got to be aggressive. They play shots that are very high risk, but they make them a lot more, so they’re low-percentage shots for them. You’ve just got to hope you get a couple of misses. It’s like people tell you about the water: respect it but don’t be afraid of it. “That’s how I treat it. I have a ton of respect for the team and the way they play, but if I’m afraid of her she’s already won.
“The Players’ Championship is very prestigious,” Carey added when asked what it would mean to win it. “It’s the top-15 teams in the world. It would be absolutely amazing to win. It’s like any Slam that way. It’s on TV (on Sportsnet), it’s a big, big event.”
It would also give the team a ton of confidence going into next season, leading up to the Canadian curling trials.
“The trials in general are harder to get into than the Scotties (national women’s championship) or anything like that,” Carey said. “That means so much on its own. The fact that it’s in Winnipeg, that’s a whole other thing. For the women, we don’t ever get to play in a full-sized NHL-sized arena. Our only chance to do it is the Olympic trials, so to do it in your hometown arena is absolutely incredible. I have no words for it. I can’t believe it. I don’t think it’ll process until we get there.”
Carey happens to be a top women’s curling team, but it annually has to get through Jennifer Jones at the provincial’s to make it to the Scotties, not unlike what Mike McEwen endures trying to beat Jeff Stoughton to get to the Tim Hortons Brier national men’s championship. That’s just the reality of curling in Manitoba.
But the trials will be a chance for Carey and teammates Kristy McDonald, Kristen Foster and Lindsay Titheridge to make a statement. All four of the Winnipeg teams have qualified for the trials, which represents one-quarter of the teams from both the men’s and women’s divisions.
There is another element to it that has Carey excited. She is a huge hockey fan, particularly of her hometown Jets. Her current favourite Jets player is Zach Bagosian, but at one time it was Randy Carlyle because he was the last Winnipeg player to play without a helmet.
Carey is featured in a unique hockey-like ad for Goldline curling supplies, facing off against Edmonton’s John Morris, whose skip, Kevin Martin, is holding a curling rock while dressed like an official imitating an official dropping a puck. Carey is dressed in a Jets uniform with a curling broom that has a Jets logo and Morris is wearing a Leaf uniform with a Leafs curling broom. When the owner of Goldine conceived the idea, she immediately thought of Morris and Carey.
“John grew up in Ottawa a big Maple Leafs fan and everybody knows I’m a big hockey fan in general and a Jets fan,” Carey said, adding she thought the idea for the ad was cool and immediately asked to be part of it.
The trials take place at the MTS Centre, and the likelihood is that given the importance of the tournament and the fact Winnipeg is a curling hotbed should produce sellout or near-sellout crowds at the 15,000-seat arena. Carey along with some other Winnipeg-born or based curlers were in attendance for the official announcement for the tournament and it was a surreal experience for Carey, even though the arena was empty. She had been to the MTS Centre as a spectator for Jets games. Now she gets to play there.
“Hopefully the seats are packed and we’ve got lots or rowdy fans,” she said. “We hadn’t let ourselves think about it because we hadn’t clinched it until now. You can’t start thinking about something that you haven’t qualified for yet. Now that we’ve qualified we have the summer and the start of next season to spend some time with our sports psychologists.”
Carey’s father, Dan, who is her daughter’s team’s coach, is a Canadian champion, playing for Vic Peters in 1992. Chelsea was only six at the time, but it fueled her interest in curling, which to that point had only been a slight interest.
“How can you not fall in love with curling when something like that happens?” she asked. “I felt my chest was going to explode, I was so proud of him.”
Incidentally, Dan Carey played in the 1997 Brier, which made history at the Calgary Saddledome by becoming the first time the tournament was played in an NHL-sized arena. Peters’ team lost to Kevin Martin’s squad from Edmonton after going undefeated in the round-robin. The arena was packed for the final.
It will probably be similarly packed for the trials. Carey will be there. The dream is now a reality.