WCURL Looks to Sweep Round-Robin

Sandbagger’ is a term more often found on the golf course than on a curling sheet, but Hollie Nicol and the rest of Team Canada’s womens curling team may be accused of slow-playing the competition at the 24^th Winter Universiade.

 

Coming into the event, Canadian head coach Jennifer Ferris emphatically identified Canada as nothing more than a dark horse with an outside shot at a medal.

 

However, sporting an unblemished record through eight draws of the round-robin, Canada has proven itself to be a far more credible threat than any of the pre-competition chatter seems to have indicated they might be.

 

With an early morning win over world championship silver medalist Bingyu Wang of China, Nicol and the rest of the Laurier four clinched top spot in the round-robin , and guaranteed their place in Thursday’s semifinal round.

 

So – one game away from running the table in the round robin, are the girls still nothing more that an outside medal hope? Well, that seems to depend on who you ask.

 

“We don’t have any international experience, unlike some of the teams here,” explained Nicol. “The Russians and the Chinese have both played at the Worlds, and they’ve got Olympic experience. We really didn’t know what to expect when we got here. Sure, we might do well in Canada at the university ranks, but we had no idea what we’d be capable of when we had to play at this level. There are a number of very good teams here, and we didn’t know if we should be considered among them.”

 

Nicol’s rink survived their toughest competition day on Monday. Not only did they significantly  hinder Great Britain’s playoff aspirations – handing the Brits their fourth loss on the week – but they also dropped China’s curling heroes 7-6 in a game that was much more lop-sided than the score indicates.

 

“I thought we played really well against the Chinese,” explained Nicol. “They got their two in the last end , but we were really driving the ends. The whole team played well in front of me, and made things pretty simple. They’re the ones playing at home in front of their fans and with all the pressure that goes along with it. The coaches have done a good job deflecting any expectations for our team trying to play up the fact that we were the underdogs coming in.”

 

And while the victory over the consensus pre-tournament favourite, the playoff berth and the chance to go undefeated through the round robin might suggest otherwise, some in the Canadian camp are still reluctant to upgrade the likelihood of success for the girls. 

 

“I still think that China is the team to beat,” Ferris reiterated. “They’re the ones that have all that international experience. They‘re the number one team in their country, and we’re somewhere around 30^th coming out of Canada. We’ve been saying all week that we’re a good team, facing some great teams, and I still think that’s the case.”

 

All that stands in the way of perfection in the round robin is an afternoon encounter with Sarka Doudova of the Czech Republic.

 

“I think it would be really good for our confidence,” said Nicol. “Coming into the game, our plan was to keep improving every single game. We haven’t played too badly throught the week, but I think our best games are still ahead of us. We want to finish strong so that we’re going into the semifinals on a bit of a roll.”