Season Recap

Wow...I can't believe how busy I was this season...how quickly it has passed. So much has happened since my last blog post (um...yeah...I know it's been almost 10 months...oops).

It was a crazy year for sure, which ended with playing at US Women's Nationals in Fargo!!! We made it! ...but I'll get to that later.

Soooo...I last wrote in April after training with Dex up in St. Paul, and finding myself on a competitive team for the season. I finished up the Poynette, WI spring league with friends. Our final game my husband subbed on our team and we played against Pete McCormick's rink. Pete was missing members of his team too, so Debbie subbed. That was a lot of fun, and it was nice to talk to Debbie about what it takes to compete.

May 2010 -
Our first event with 2/3 of our competitive rink was up in St. Paul at their summer spiel. I was sooo nervous to prove myself to my new skip ~ and I did not curl well. I had a lot of fun with friends playing tailgate games out in the parking lot. Margeaqux and I were queens of "bags" ...but I was not so hot on the ice.

June 2010 -
The beginning of June left me with a few weeks where I did not get on the ice. ...because there was none. I started running and biking a few times a week when I could fit it in. Toward the end of June, I played with a team in the Badger State Games. We were the champions. I got a gold medal! My kids were extremely impressed.

The end of June a "fun league" at the Pettit National Ice Center got me back on the ice. With extra ice time before and after our league games, I would practice my delivery mechanics. It is at the Pettit Center that I met Coach Neil Doese. We talked a lot about curling, and about competing, and my goals as a curler. We started working together on tweaking my delivery.

July 2010 -
There were several more weeks of the Pettit league and practices in July. Mid-July was the Green Bay Summer Tailgate Bonspiel. I skipped a team of 2nd year curlers for the extremely fun weekend. We ended up runners up in the 3rd event. We had a great time that weekend, and met some great people, including a team from Northwestern Univ who we have all become fairly close with. The friendships I have made over the years curling is one of the BEST things about curling!

August 2010 -
The Rice Lake summer spiel was our first event with our full competitive team...which, at that point, consisted of Kim, Ashley, Emilia and me. Coach Neil came with us, and the weekend went fairly well. We L-Out'd in the semi finals. Again, a fun weekend...and we got to know a lot about each other as teammates.

September 2010 -
Emilia and I signed up to play in the Poynette Fall league which runs for 8 weeks Sept - Oct. I had contacted the league organizer and asked if he knew of anyone who was looking for a front-end...hoping he would be able to put us with someone we could learn from. We got an email the week before league with our assigned teammates. He put us with Betty Wang! She is the Chinese Olympic skip who had won the bronze medal in Vancouver. Amazing!!! Our other teammates, Lori and Richard, were also two good people to know and learn from.

October 2010 -

Emilia and I played at the North Shore bonspiel with Debbie McCormick and Richard Maskell. We won the first event! It was Richard's 135th bonspiel win. I learned a lot that weekend, and it was a great way to kick off the season!

October ended up being a really busy month curling. Ashley came down with Mono...so we had to find a replacement. Luckily, Lori, who we had played with in Poynette, was available. So, we played the St. Paul Men's Cashspiel mid-October. The field was tough, and we did not do win any games...but it was a good learning experience.

The end of October brought a couple fun-spiels. I skipped a team in the KMCC Ladies Fall Fling, and we won the first event! That Thursday/Friday speil was followed immediately by the Madison Halloween speil with the same team I had played with in Green Bay. The Halloween spiel was pure fun! Met lots of great people, and reconnected with old friends!

November 2010 -

The first weekend in November was the Duluth Cashspiel. This cashspiel had a women's division. We won one out of 5 games. Again, it was a learning experience. We definitely had room for improvement, but had proven to ourselves that we had some potential...but we were feeling like the team wasn't quite working in it's current lineup.

The second weekend in November brought me up to St. Paul for a mixed-doubles bonspiel with my partner, Brett. We had signed up for the Mixed-Doubles Nationals, and this was our practice event. We did well. We learned a lot, and were ready for the next competition. There was a major blizzard in the twin cities that weekend, so getting to and from the club was an adventure.

That same weekend, we had a team phone conference, attempted to work through some issues and hopefully make a switch in the team lineup. The lineup change did not go over well, and it was apparent this was not a team that would be together for the long term. Later that week, our skip decided to leave the team. It was a mad scramble to find someone to fill the spot. We were able to get Sherri to play 3rd, and Lori would skip.

December 2010 -

The first weekend in December was the Madison Cashspiel. This was the first weekend we really got a chance to meet our new teammate...despite not playing together, the weekend went well. We didn't win any games, but we proved that we had definite potential.

December was also the Mixed Doubles Nationals in Duluth. Brett and I won a game, and were close on the rest of them. It was a great experience to be at a national competition with timed games, officials, timed practice sessions, and rocks with sensor handles. I was really happy to have this experience so I was not as nervous about all the protocol and procedures when I got to Women's Nationals. :)

January 2010 -

Our competitive team played in the St. Paul Women's Cashspiel. We were runner up in the first event. We played well most of the weekend.

Since 13 teams signed up for Women's Nationals this year, there was a "challenge round" in Grand Forks, ND to play for the berth ton Nationals. We ended up having to play our old skip's team for the last spot. We won, and were headed to Nationals!

Emilia and I also played in a fun women's spiel this month (as part of the USWCA Circuit Event).

February 2010 -

We had a practice day in Madison against some men from one of the Men's national qualifiers. We learned a lot that day, and I wish we would have had more opportunities to play and practice this way during the year.

The games...the training...the preparation...the practice....all lead to the big show in Fargo... U.S. Women's Nationals (to be covered in my next blog entry ~ because my lunch hour is up, and I have a lot of work to do today...I promise it will not take me 9 months to make my next post)