The last time Kerri Einarson skipped Canada at a world championship on home ice was inside a COVID-restricted bubble, and the stands in Calgary weren’t technically empty, but the cardboard cutouts of fans in seats to try to simulate a crowd “weren’t ideal,” as Einarson recalled recently, with a laugh.
Starting on Saturday, Einarson will have another chance to represent her country at a world championship at home, and this time in Calgary, the 38-year-old skipper and her Manitoba-based team of Val Sweeting, Shannon Birchard and Karlee Burgess will get to enjoy the full experience, bubble-free.
“It’s going to be pretty amazing to be able to have fans in the stands,” Einarson said of what’ll be her fourth world championship appearance, where she’ll be looking to improve on a best-ever bronze medal finish. “We’re definitely feeling ready and excited for it.”
Living and breathing fans filling up Winsport Event Centre from March 14-22 won’t be the only difference to this experience, though. This field is missing the world’s top-three-ranked teams, as every podium finisher in the women’s team event at the recent Olympics in Cortina will be missing in action, most notably the reigning world champions and Olympic bronze medallists led by Canada’s Rachel Homan.
Olympic gold medallist Anna Hasselborg of Sweden isn’t in the field because her team wasn’t selected, silver medallist Silvana Tirinzoni lost in Switzerland’s qualifier days after losing the Olympic final, and Homan’s team didn’t compete in the qualifier, the Tournament of Hearts that finished less than two weeks before their opener in Cortina.
Tirinzoni and Homan are winners of seven of the last eight world titles, and so a new champion is going to emerge from this 13-team field.
That leaves Einarson’s Team Canada with not only a more wide-open field where the world No. 5 team is second in ranking only to Korea’s Gim Eun-Ji, but also facing a big task in trying to make it three straight world championship titles for Canada’s curling women and defend the titles won by Homan, Tracy Fleury, Emma Miskew and Sarah Wilkes the last two years.
“Team Homan has really set the bar there the last couple of times, and so we'd love to keep that gold in Canada and come home,” Sweeting said.
“Definitely some new teams that we haven’t played in a long time or even on the world stage,” added Einarson, a five-time Tournament of Hearts champion. “So, a lot of first-timers there. I think that our experience over the years will help us going into these worlds.”
For Einarson, Birchard and Sweeting, it’s a fourth world championship appearance, and a first for Burgess, who said she’d be leaning on the experience of her teammates in her debut.
They all left early for Calgary to have more time to practice together before the event starts, and they’re staying at an Airbnb, instead of at the hotel where they lived “for months and months” while they played a bubbled-up COVID season in 2021.
Canada opens play Saturday against Sweden’s Isabella Wrana, who won mixed-doubles Olympic gold in Cortina, before playing later in the day against Team USA’s Delaney Strouse, the 25-year-old from Michigan who’s making her world debut.
The top six teams advance to playoffs, with the winners of each round-robin pool going straight to semifinals on March 21, and the other four teams playing earlier that day to determine the other two semifinal berths. The gold-medal final is on Sunday, March 22, at 3 p.m. local time, 5 p.m. ET.
Although there is pressure and expectation on Team Canada to be in that big game, they’re trying to avoid keeping that front of mind.
“I think the biggest thing is to try not to put so much pressure on ourselves. I think we headed into those past worlds with just, it felt like the weight of the world on our shoulders at times,” Birchard said of the 2023 event in Sweden, where the team won its second straight world bronze. “I think we just need to come in with a lot of confidence and know that we can really lean on our experience.”
Einarson, Sweeting and Birchard have been together since 2018-19, when they formed a team made up entirely for former skips, and they’ve been among the world’s best ever since, winning three straight national titles. This latest one in February was their first with Burgess, the lead who joined the team in January 2025.
Now they’re looking at what’s probably their best shot at winning a world title, right at home in front of what will be an appreciative crowd. The opportunity comes for a team that in 2020 won the Tournament of Hearts, only to see that year’s world championships cancelled due to COVID.
“I love this team,” Einarson said, as she considered the prospect of winning a world championship together. “We’ve been through so much with each other and it would definitely mean the world to us.”
“We just want to position ourselves well through the round-robin and then take playoffs as they come and just get ourselves into that gold-medal game,” added Sweeting, who lives in Edmonton and gets to compete for the title in her home province. “To make the most of it and to come home with a victory, I think that would mean so much.”
This team knows there will be a lot of eyes on them on home ice as they try to replicate what Homan, Fleury, Miskew and Wilkes did the last two years.
“That maple leaf can be heavy, that’s for sure,” Einarson said. “So, you try to not put so much pressure on yourself or even to think about that, but it's hard. I think every athlete does that and, you know, they just want to perform well and for their country, and it's hard, but we’ve just got to embrace that.”
Team Canada has no other choice as they get set to play on home ice and try to defend that title.
“We’ve just got to be out there for ourselves and our teammates and focus on that, and not so much everything else,” Einarson said. “And that's what makes us perform well.”
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