THUNDER BAY — Krista McCarville and company bucked a growing trend last summer.
Longtime rival Tracy Fleury disbanded her own team and joined Rachel Homan, while Jennifer Jones, arguably the best skip in Canadian women’s curling history, snapped up Mackenzie and Emily Zacharias, Karlee Burgess and Lauren Lenentine and formed a super team of her own in pursuit of a record seventh national curling championship.
The McCarville unit decided they were stronger together and rather than make wholesale changes to the team to get over the Scotties hump, last year’s silver medallists decided instead to tweak their game, knowing they were just a win away from their first Scotties win last year at Fort William Gardens.
“This is the team I want to win with,” McCarville said on Tuesday night at a sendoff at her home rink, the Fort William Curling Club.
“And this is the team I think we can.”
It’s not for lack of experience.
McCarville, who turned 40 last November, will be making her 10th appearance at the Scotties, her sixth as Northern Ontario champion. She’s got two runner-up finishes to her name, and captured bronze in 2010.
Lead Sarah Potts will be making her sixth appearance, while second Ashley Sippala with be at Scotties No. 7 and third Kendra Lilly, who calls Sudbury home, is also at the Scotties for the sixth time since joining the team in 2016.
McCarville said every year is a learning experience.
“You always think of the end. You want to win, you want the gold medal, you want to be Canadian champions. I think just knowing how long of a week it is, playing all those great teams, you can’t go in thinking about that final weekend because you could get wrapped up in it,” said McCarville, a teacher in the Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board system.
“I think being at that many Scotties, and playing in the playoffs and being there, I think we know now that mentally we need to relax a little bit. It is a long week and getting into those playoffs is very mentally tiring and physically tiring.”
Potts, whose father, former two-time world champion Rick Lang, coaches the team, said the changes on the ice have been deliberate.
From new ways to practice and new techniques, they’re all put in place to help the team find a way to beat opponents like Team Canada’s Kerri Einarson, who defeated Team McCarville 9-6 in last year’s final.
“Also, I’m holding the broom in the house this year,” Potts said. “So we have Kendra sweeping. She’s a great sweeper and that way Krista and I are able to talk more strategy in preparation because we’re practicing together all the time.”
Potts did acknowledge the team didn’t really plan its season all that well, the early events coming before they’d had a chance to get onto a curling sheet in Thunder Bay.
“It didn’t really pay off for us. I think we would plan our year differently. But with that said, we definitely did get better as the year went on, so that’s good, because we want to peak at the Scotties, and I do think we’re trending in the right direction.”
McCarville also found new inspiration this year, not that she really needed it.
Her daughter, Bella, curled her way to the U18 nationals, making the playoff round and McCarville said she had to take her competitive curling hat off and put her mom hat on, cheering from the stands.
“It kind of lights a little fire to make you want to play a bit better. Those girls out there, they’re so loose and relaxed out there. They’re having a blast and honestly, I said, that’s what I want to do this week. I want to go and I want to have a lot of fun,” McCarville said.
“We have a lot of fun off the ice and we’re pretty serious on the ice. But I want to go there and be more like them and have some fun and just enjoy the moment. You don’t know when it’s going to be your last moment at the Scotties.”
McCarville opens play on Saturday at 4 p.m. against Jones’ Manitoba rink.
