Quebec rink struggles on national stage
Young team out of the playoffs at Scotties tourney
KINGSTON, ONT. — They may have gone undefeated in the Quebec playdowns, but skip Allison Ross and her rinkmates from the Glenmore Curling Club have discovered how little that means when it comes to competing on the national stage.
On Friday, Ross’s team — which also features lead Sasha Beauchamp, second Brittany O’Rourke and third Audrée Dufresne — completed their first Tournament of Hearts as a team.
“It is a big disappointment,” Ross said shortly after suffering a frustrating 8-7 loss Friday morning to Newfoundland that dropped her rink’s record to 3-7 with one game remaining in the evening.
“I would have liked to have a positive record. I was hoping for six wins. But it would have been a little bit ambitious to think we could do here what we did at provincials.”
Ross was appearing in her third Scotties this week, but her first as a skip. For Beauchamp, O’Rourke and Dufresne, this was the first time they have played in the national championship.
The team came together two years ago, when Ross, 36, saw that O’Rourke, 24, and Beauchamp, also 24, were two bright young stars in Quebec curling, both having played on three junior prov- incial championship teams. Dufresne, 40, was playing on a team that was breaking up and had played with Ross 10 years earlier, so she was a natural fit for the final piece to the puzzle.
The group had immediate chemistry — and success — making it all the way to the provincial final in 2012, before losing to Marie-France Larouche, who has dominated Quebec curling for several years.
After that loss, Ross insisted 2013 would be different. The team would practice much more, both as a team and individually, and play more bonspiels — all in an effort to get over the hump and become provincial champions.
They succeeded even more than they expected, running the table at the provincials in Victoriaville in January to punch their ticket to Kingston in grand style.
“It was a fantastic week,” said Ross, who is a self-employed bookkeeper.
“We had great ice conditions in Victoriaville in a new arena there and it suited the style of our game. We just got on a roll and kept going.”
Ross grew up in Ontario, and appeared in her first Scotties in 1999 representing that province.
She moved to Quebec in 2000 and played on the front end of Brenda Nicholls’s provincial championship team in 2005.
She’s all too aware that it took eight years to return to the national stage.
“Eight years is a long time to wait for that experience again, so you just try to soak in every game and every moment and enjoy creating all those memories,” she said.
“Being at the Scotties is an experience. You never know when you’re going to get back, so as soon as we knew we were out of the playoffs, we just said: ‘Let’s just focus on enjoying this’.”
She added that the experience this time as a skip was dramatically different than eight years ago.
“I was definitely feeling the pressure much more,” said the avid runner, cyclist and pastry chef.
“Our first game was a televised game. We were playing against Nova Scotia. It definitely was a nerve-racking start.
“And then there’s the media — I had never been interviewed before, and never been asked for autographs, either. It was all very new to me. But it’s been really fun. I love that part of it.”
Ross said she and the team intend to work even harder next year so they can repeat as champions and have the once-in-a-lifetime experience of playing in front of their home fans. The Canadian Curling Association announced this week that Montreal will play host to next year’s Tournament of Hearts at the Maurice Richard Arena.
“I think it’s going to be fantastic — it’s going to be really fun,” she said. “Here, when we played Ontario, you could hear the crowd support and I feed off that. Plus, I hope it’ll bring a little bit of interest to the sport in Montreal.”