Life: On the Rocks

People ask me all the time how curling teams are formed. I know that in many other competitive sports players are scouted, invited to training camps, evaluated on their skills, then placed into teams by a governing body and awarded contracts. In curling - at least in Canadian curling - the process usually goes something more like this: "Hey, what are you doing next year? Are you interested in putting a team together?" "Sure, let's go for a drink and talk about it." On the Ontario Curling Tour, you end up playing in tournaments with the same people multiple times per season so we all get to know each other pretty well. We're Facebook friends, real-life friends, competitors, former teammates, mortal enemies... Everyone has some form of a relationship with everyone else. I knew who Chrissy Cadorin was, but the first time we said more than "good game" to each other during handshakes was one evening in the winter of 2015 in front of the Listowel ...

By the end of my Junior curling career, I had competed in five Ontario Provincial Championships, three OUA Championships, one CIS Championship, and was an OCAA Champion. I won three varsity curling MVP awards from my high school and one in my freshman year in University. In my third year I won a coach-nominated award for my outstanding contribution to the overall athletic program at Trent University. I was not the most decorated curler in my age group, but I had always been a top contender in the Ottawa area. In addition to my curling career, I was a competitive softball pitcher, a competitive soccer player, and was ranked 4th in Ottawa for 1500m track. I played on the A-squad for my middle school's basketball team and while I never tried out for the touch football team I can throw a mean spiral. Gym class was my favourite period and I spent my recesses in grade school playing tennis ball foot hockey in the alley with the boys. I was a jock who preferred to spend my weekends cano...