Olympic Qualifiers

Hi all!

On Tuesday, I go up to Seattle to prepare for the Women's Olympic Qualifier. My team's first game is on Thursday afternoon at 4 pm PST. There's some information on the US Curling Association's web site http://www.usacurl.org/curlingrocks/ and there may be some at the Granite Curling Club web site http://www.curlingseattle.org/. I'll also try to post basic score information here. (If you look on those site, you'll see us listed as Team Coleman. We're called "Coleman" because I'm skipping, which is sort of like team captain.)

"Qualifiers" is a competition for spots in the 2009 US Nationals/2010 Olympic Trials to be held in February 2009. There are three women's qualifier events - West, Midwest and East - and 21 teams total. One team from our group of five will go directly to Nationals/Trials, two teams will go to the Challenge Round (also known as "Second Chance,") and two will be eliminated. (From the Challenge Round, half the teams go to Nationals/Trials and the other half are eliminated.) 10 women's teams total will compete at Nationals/Trials. The winning team from that event will represent the USA at the World Championship in 2009 and the Vancouver Olympics in 2010.

Here's our schedule:

• Thursday ~9 am - Official practice
• Thursday 4 pm - Clark vs. Coleman
• Friday 8 am - Gervais vs. Coleman
• Friday 4 pm - Coleman vs. Hufman
• Saturday 8 am - Coleman vs. Cloutier
• Saturday 4 pm - Coleman = bye (The rest of the gals play at this time.)
• Sunday - Tiebreakers if necessary

These are 10-end timed games.

A bit about the teams and the event:

Three of the teams (Clark, Cloutier and Coleman) are Seattle-based; Hufman is from Alaska and Gervais is from North Dakota. We're ranked fourth (Clark, Hufman, Gervais, Coleman, Cloutier) - which I think is fair. I'm pretty sure that every member of my team (myself included) has less experience than every other player there. (Actually, combined, we still have less experience than most of these gals!) However, we will be playing on home ice and we are completely nuts, so anything's possible! I'd give us about a 15% chance of making it to the Challenge Round - which would be a fabulous result for us. Fingers crossed, we'll play well, have fun and get lucky!

Thanks again to everyone for your support! :)

Gabrielle

PS: Most of the earlier stuff on this blog is from Mixed Doubles in Two Harbors in Dec 2008. My team (Cornfield) finished 2-5 in that event.