Carey home again, but as a visitor

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This article was published 29/10/2014 (4344 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SELKIRK, Man. — It’s been almost 10 months now, since Chelsea Carey clinched the Manitoba women’s curling championship, and the frame around her has changed.

She has a new team, now. New colours on her curling jacket. She’s freshly turned 30, and there’s even a new provincial flag (Alberta) flying beside her name.

Still, as Carey gets ready to battle a lofty field in the Masters Grand Slam of Curling this week, some things haven’t changed: she’s still a fearless and relentlessly competitive skip, her third Laura Crocker confirms.

She still ponders the rings with her father, 1992 Brier champ Dan Carey, offering his coach’s advice. Most of all, she’s still a Manitoban at heart, seven months after she decamped to Edmonton to start fresh with a whole new rink.

“It’s just nice to be here,” Carey said, after throwing practice rocks at the Selkirk Recreation Complex on Tuesday afternoon. “I was there all summer, I settled in as I could… thank God we (the team) are good friends, because I still don’t really know anybody there besides them.”

That team includes Crocker, second Taylor McDonald and lead Jen Gates. They made their debut at a test event last April, shortly after Carey disbanded the foursome that won bronze for Manitoba at the 2014 Scotties Tournament of Hearts. She’s not just the skip, but the veteran of the bunch, with McDonald fresh out of juniors and Crocker still just 23. That was one of the things that intrigued Crocker about joining forces.

“I’ve always skipped, and it’s been really nice for me to be able to take the backseat and let her take the lead,” Crocker said. “Chelsea’s fearless. She’s led some teams through some pretty great things, and having someone who is so confident in themselves and really feels like they can throw and make anything, it’s just a comforting feeling to have them in the house. Some things she can bring forward, you can only get from experience.”

So far, Carey is frank to say, the results have been a little mixed. The team won their first bonspiel this season, the HDF Insurance Shoot-Out in Edmonton, where they lost just one game in eight. But they missed the playoffs in their next three events, going 3-2 in the Prestige Hotels and Resorts Curling Classic in Vernon, B.C. and 3-3 in the Autumn Gold grand slam that Team Jennifer Jones wound up winning. Last week, at the CanadInns Women’s Classic in Portage la Prairie, they dropped all three of their games.

But it’s still early in the season, and very early in this new Olympic quad. With a new team, Carey agreed, there’s always going to be some getting-to-know-you stuff. “There are some pretty good throws that aren’t being made because the broom’s not quite in the right place, or we don’t quite get the sweep over the line call or whatever it is,” she said. “It’s close, and we know it’s close, and it’s getting better. We’re not seeing the results of that yet, but we can feel it.”

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Besides, a good week in Selkirk could turn things right around. This Masters, which runs through Sunday, could present the toughest field they’ve yet battled. The list of 15 women’s teams competiting in the grand slam is daunting: in Carey’s round-robin Pool B alone, there is two-time defending national champion Rachel Homan and her Ontario rink, veteran Silvana Tirinzoni and her fellow Swiss national Alina Paetz, and 2013 Olympic trial finalist Sherry Middaugh.

They’ll kick off the grand slam today, facing Tirinzoni in the 9 a.m. draw at Selkirk Recreation Complex. If they can make it to the playoffs — the top eight teams go through — they may have to face heavyweights including Jennifer Jones, 2013 world champion Eve Muirhead of Scotland, or 2014 Olympic silver medallist Margaretha Sigfridsson.

While there’s loads of competition, though, there aer also some familiar friends. Carey’s former third, Kristy McDonald, is leading her own brand-new team into the Masters, and former Carey second Kristen Foster is also in Selkirk throwing second with her longtime friend, reigning Ontario champion (and one-time Manitoba junior champ) Allison Flaxey.

That’s how it always goes in the small world of curling, of course, where former teammates so often find themselves facing off on the sheet. “It’s great. There was no ill-will when we split, so it’s just nice to see them and play in events with them,” Carey said. “It was nice last week (at the CanadInns Women’s Classic), it was a little bit of a reunion to see them all.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Melissa Martin
Reporter-at-large

Melissa Martin reports and opines for the Winnipeg Free Press.

Every piece of reporting Melissa produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.