TRU Women’s Curling Team Competes to be First B.C. U SPORTS National Champion

Reported by Nikitha Martins

Thompson Rivers University’s women’s curling team is one step closer to bringing B.C. its first national U Sports curling championship.

This is the Wolfpack’s fourth appearance at the university national curling championships and after a final win in round-robin play, 5-4 against the Mount Allison Mounties from Sackville, New Brunswick, TRU is ranked second going into the playoff round.

TRU’s Skip Corryn Brown said that their experience from previous years has definitely been working in their favour.

“We did come up short twice,” Brown said. “So this year we’re hoping to leave it all out there and hopefully come out with a gold.”

TRU now faces the third placed Brock University Badgers, who they beat 8-2 just two day ago.

“They’re a very good team and they’re definitely good at executing so what we’ll have to focus on is capitalizing when they’ve missed,” Brown said. “So we just need to make sure we’re making shots if they get a slight miss of even a half shot.”

Erin Pincott, who plays third for the team, said the team is well rested today and is excited to potentially compete for B.C.’s first curling national championship.

“That would be cool, I didn’t actually know that [B.C. hasn’t won],” Pincott said. “Anytime we can represent B.C. it’s a huge honour.”

TRU entered the championships as the undefeated Western champions, but the team’s coach Allison MacInnes believes that the stakes are different when competing nationally.

“It’s competing at a higher level,” MacInnes said. “We didn’t play all that well at western’s, even though we came out well.”

However, MacInnes said that the team has become comfortable playing in arena conditions and feels confident going into the final games.

“They’re prepared, they’ve worked hard all season and … this is their last chance to play in university,” MacInnes said. “It would be great to come back to Kamloops and to Thompson Rivers with a gold medal. Not just for us, but the people of Kamloops.

The first stone in TRU’s semifinal game against Brock University will be thrown at 6:30 PM