Holland ready to skip back into sport
Former Scotties champion curling competitively again
SASKATOON Amber Holland slid up and down an ice sheet at the Nutana Curling Club Friday afternoon, looking just like the old Holland.
Her hands co-ordinated nicely with her eyes, her delivery was steady. But after three years away from competitive curling, Holland — the 2011 national Scotties champion and world silver medallist — didn’t quite feel herself.
“I think the brain is rusty,” Holland says with a chuckle after a 7-3 loss to Shannon Birchard at the Colonial Square Ladies Curling Classic, a World Curling Tour event. “Throwing-wise, I feel really good. But now I have to engage my skipping brain. It’s not automatic.”
Holland, 43, was once one of the world’s most immersed curlers. She juggled a hectic playing career with executive duties at CurlSask — first as its technical director, then as its executive director.
Holland eased into a life of curling semi-retirement over the last few years. She still played at local clubs, first in Regina then in Davidson, and spared for WCT teams.
“I missed throwing the rock more than anything, being part of the team,” she says. “But I didn’t always miss the travelling to spiels, the time away, the administrative stuff, the finding sponsors ... all that stuff that goes along with it.”
But she went to the national Scotties last season as the fifth for Saskatchewan champion Penny Barker and that’s where it hit her.
“I sat there, watched the whole week and said, ‘You know what? I can do this again. I could come back here, play here, be here,’” she says.
So she put together a team, starting with veterans Laura Strong and Deb Lozinski, then Sherri Singler, who was without a team after Stefanie Lawton’s quartet broke up. Their first practice was Sept. 6.
“When I stepped away, it wasn’t that I knew I was done,” she says. “It was ‘I need a break.’ Now, I’ve had the break. So let’s come back and try, and see how it goes. Curling is a big part of my life and having it not there didn’t seem right. So I’m trying it again, with a team.”