New-look Team Homan is making things happen
Just to clear up any confusion, Rachel Homan still has a curling team that bears her name and still throws last rocks, but she’s no longer the skip.
Homan, a three-time Canadian women’s champion who represents the Ottawa Curling Club but lives near Edmonton, handed the game-calling duties to veteran Tracy Fleury this season and it’s a move that has produced great results so far.
With Fleury throwing third stones and calling the strategy, Homan throwing fourth stones and handling sweeping duties, Team Homan has won two events in the last month and sits atop the Canadian Team Ranking System standings.
“It’s been really good,” said Emma Miskew, a longtime team member who has moved from third to second this season. “It was definitely very different at the beginning for everyone. We knew it wasn’t going to be instantaneously easy to be all in these new roles. Especially for Rachel and Tracy, who have both been skipping for their whole careers, they’re both doing something different now and we knew there would be a little bit of a learning curve to that.”
In a departure from the way things have been done in Canada and at the World Curling Federation level for many years, the foursome remains known as Team Homan, even though the rules suggest it should be called Team Fleury.
Miskew said the team members wanted to stay with Team Homan because of the branding and recognizability they’ve built over the years. Though there was some resistance from Curling Canada and the WCF, it seems no one is going to make a fuss about the team name at this point.
“I know it was a little bit controversial, but it wasn’t intended to be,” said Miskew, whose team also includes lead Sarah Wilkes.
“It was just something we had chosen to do. It seems like it has passed through and we’re allowed to do that now, whereas it seemed a little dicey at times.
“I just think teams should be allowed to be called whatever they want to be called. There shouldn’t be a rule about that. I know they’re trying to avoid having it be a sponsor or something like that, where you don’t know who the team is, and that’s fine, but this is a decision we made just for consistency for our sponsors and all of our fans.”
Homan and Miskew have played together as back-enders since they were teenagers. They’ve won three Canadian women’s championships and been runners-up three more times, they’ve won a world championship (2017) and represented Canada at the Olympics in 2018.
It’s a pretty big departure for this team to not have Homan calling the shots and not have Miskew in the house as her vice-skip.
“We’ve been doing the exact same thing for our entire careers, just with different players playing front end,” Miskew said. “For me, it’s a really welcome change to be doing something different and have a new challenge, sweeping last rocks instead of being in the house.
“I’ve been enjoying that element. I feel like I know the game really well and I know where rocks need to be placed, ideally. I like having an influence there too.”
Meanwhile, 33-year-old Homan is an athletic curler who has always been a strong sweeper, but rarely got to use the skill in the women’s game in the past.
“Rachel is very strong and we said ‘We should use you,’” Miskew said. “She’s been really loving being a sweeper and having more impact on front end rocks and being able to provide more information that she sees when throwing last and helping us to make our shots, too.”
Then there’s Fleury, a Sudbury, Ont., resident who was a shot away from winning the Olympic trials in 2021 with her Manitoba team, and has been near the top of the women’s rankings for several years now.
She’s known to be a great strategist, and maybe taking the pressure off of having to throw last rocks works well for her.
“Tracy’s just a really calm, smart player to have in the house,” Miskew said. “Everyone is just fitting in really well to their roles. Tracy has been great. It’s really nice having her on board and she’s fit in really well with the team.”
It’s hard to argue with the success the team has had so far. Team Homan has a 23-5 record and picked up wins at recent events in Grande Prairie and Red Deer, Alta. The foursome also lost the final of an event in Edmonton in September.