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, skipping a competitive team of her own for the first time in a long while, 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 the provincial governing body’s technical director, then as its executive director. During one memorable weekend, she did both, winning the Saskatchewan women’s title while dealing with the matter of a fire that devoured part of the facility, and forced a mid-stream shift of the championship site.
Holland eased into a life of curling semi-retirement over the last few years, resigning from her CurlSask post and cutting back on-ice time. She still played at local clubs, first in Regina and then in Davidson, and spared for WCT teams who needed an emergency fill-in.
“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. Fans don’t always realize how much there is to getting on the ice, before you throw.”
But she went to the national Scotties last season as the fifth for Saskatchewan champion Penny Barker and that’s where it hit her: She was ready to get back into it.
“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 found herself without a team after Stefanie Lawton’s quartet broke up. Their first practice was Sept. 6. On Friday, they played their first game — a loss, but a start.
“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.
“I’m not shooting for the Olympics; I’m not here to move mountains. We have a very specific goal of trying to represent Saskatchewan at the Scotties.”
They’re playing five WCT events this season with an eye on the provincial championship. That’s what makes Holland happy these days. The bigger pursuits aren’t on her radar the way they used to be.
“You’re still going to have those top teams going full bore, doing the slams, trying for the Olympics,” Holland said. “But there’s a group of us out there, where the Scotties is a great goal.”