Unlike their male provincial teammates, Taylor Reese-Hansen’s B.C. championship team goes into the 2018 New Holland Canadian Junior Men’s and Women’s Curling Championships in Shawinigan, Que., today as an unknown.
B.C.’s Tyler Tardi is the defending national champion. But Reese-Hansen, third Catera Park, second Jordan Koster and lead Sydney Brilz enter the 14-team competition with much less fanfare.
“We’re all just really excited. It’s our first time and we’re going to soak up the experience,” said Reese-Hansen, originally from Kitimat. She moved to Victoria for the curling and to pursue her education. The 20-year-old is in her second year of athletic therapy at Camosun College.
“This is what we trained for, this is why we go to compete and we feel honoured to be representing B.C. We don’t know how we’ll compare to the other teams, but I’m sure we’ll do fine.”
The Victoria Curling Club rink has wily coach Todd Troyer leading the way. It will be his fourth Canadian junior event in the last eight years, a major plus for the group.
“He’s our lucky charm, for sure,” Reese-Hansen said. “He has a ton of experience. He has schedules for us and he knows exactly what we’re getting into. It makes it easier on us and a big help, so we’re not as shocked when we get there.”
The group left Thursday, joining teammate Park, of Coquitlam, in Vancouver before pressing on east to Quebec, where the 14 men’s and 14 women’s teams will compete for Canadian titles. The teams are separated into two seven-team pools per gender for an initial round-robin, followed by a championship round (top four in each pool) leading to the playoffs.
The top team will advance to its respective final on Sunday, Jan. 21, while the second- and third-place teams meet in a semifinal the day before to determine the other finalist.
“We’ve been through the schedule and I’ve talked about all the things that happen,” said Troyer, who took a break from coaching last year to be part of the host committee as the national tournament was held at the Archie Browning Sports Centre in Esquimalt, where Tardi won his 2017 junior men’s crown.
“It’s the excitement of arriving. Then it’s hurry up and wait around. But in the end, it’s a provincial championship times two,” Troyer said. “It’s double the length [of a normal championship tournament], but you have a routine set up with the pre-game routine. Then you come out and play the games and then de-brief the games. It’s kind of like Groundhog Day: You do it over and over and over again.”
“We have goals that we’ve set, but we’re going in trying not to feel too much pressure,” said Courtenay’s Koster, who is 20 and studying criminal justice at Camosun College. “We’re just going to go out there and play our best and whatever happens, happens.”
That’s the attitude the group took into the provincials, where they battled their way to the title after starting the event at 0-2.
“We always knew that we could do it,” said Brilz, also 20 and a second-year psychology student at Camosun College. “We knew that we had it. Going into the [provincial] final, we felt we had to take control. We did it and it was incredible.
“I think there will be a couple of nerves — maybe more just because of the atmosphere that we’re in, but we just have to stick to doing what we know how to do.”
Troyer has faith in the group, which includes 19-year-old Park, who has a year of junior eligibility remaining.
“Our goal is to make the playoffs,” he said.
The winning teams will represent Canada in the 2018 VolP Defender World Juniors, March 3-11 at Aberdeen, Scotland.
