National Post (National Edition)
Rocque among women's teams on curling bubble
Rink has played just one time since March
When Edmonton's Kelsey Rocque made a decision to change up her curling team after the 2019-20 season, she was thinking it would lead to future success.
Little did she know it would wind up putting her team in a tough spot less than a year later.
“We got a stroke of bad luck with seeking an opportunity and moving forward with a mixture of teammates,” Rocque said Wednesday. “We're just kind of waiting and seeing if we'll get an opportunity to play and go from there.”
At the end of last season, Rocque and her third, Danielle Schmiemann, parted ways with second Becca Hebert and lead Jesse Marlow and scooped up free-agent front-enders Dana Ferguson and Rachelle Brown, who were fresh off spending a year as Team Canada on skip Chelsea Carey's Calgary team.
It was a move designed to give Rocque a better chance of winning an Alberta provincial championship, of qualifying for the 2021 Olympic trials and improving her chances of getting to the Olympics.
Then a pandemic hit, the curling world effectively shut down and everything went haywire. The Rocque team has played precisely one game since last March.
“We need to get back into the competitive environment,” Rocque said. “It's huge for us, moving forward into next season and toward the trials and other important events that will be coming up.”
Amid the COVID-19 madness, Curling Canada has announced that the Scotties Tournament of Hearts will be played in a bubble in Calgary next month, with an expanded 18-team field, including three wild-card squads.
There's where things get a little crazy for Rocque and her teammates. The wild card teams are being determined using the 2019-20 Canadian Team Ranking System standings, but in order to qualify, a team must have at least three of the four members that earned the points intact.
Rocque only has two and is therefore currently on the outside looking in.
“It's a little bit of bad fortune and a little bit unfair at the same time,”
Rocque said. “None of us could have predicted a year ago that we'd still be in this same position now, with the pandemic and everything. Obviously that's an unforeseen circumstance.”
If Rocque, Schmiemann, Ferguson and Brown were allowed to combine their points, they'd easily be in as a wild-card team. Carey's team finished fifth in the CTRS standings last year, while Rocque's finished sixth.
“The two-and-two rule, unfortunately for us, is kind of disqualifying us from the CTRS list,” Rocque said.
Curling Canada has not yet announced how it will fill out the 18-team fields for the Scotties and Tim Hortons Brier, which will also be played in the Calgary bubble.
We know that 14 member associations are expected to send teams and that the returning champions (Kerri Einarson and Brad Gushue) will be in the fields.
It's expected the next two spots will be based strictly on CTRS standings, which means Winnipeg's Mike McEwen (5th in CTRS) and Calgary's Kevin Koe (6th) are locks on the men's side and Manitoba's Tracy Fleury (2nd) is a shoo-in for a spot in the women's event.
With Rocque, Carey (who is currently a free agent) and Silvernagle not eligible, the next team on the list could end up being 11th-ranked Mackenzie Zacharias of Winnipeg, who was the 2020 world junior champion. Zacharias will get the second wild card spot if Suzanne Birt wins the Prince Edward Island championship. If Birt doesn't win in P.E.I., her ninth-place ranking in CTRS would get her into the Scotties anyway, ahead of Zacharias.
“We've been told that we're in the mix of things and that we could potentially be going to the Scotties, but we don't know for sure,” Zacharias said Wednesday. “There are a number of factors up in the air.
“We're trying not to get our hopes up, but we're also kind of excited. We don't want to start planning because we don't know how things are going to shake out in the end. One hundred per cent, for sure, we are prepared to go.”
Then there's the question of who should get the third spot. A Curling Canada spokesman is on record saying the three-out-of-four rule for teams may not be applied to the third wild card spots.
That could open one last door for Rocque or some other hopeful team.
“I guess that would be our last hope to get in, that they would ignore the 3 of 4 rule,” Rocque said. “Any opportunity we can get, we're gonna take it. So we'll just basically wait and see if there's any kind of exemption for our team and go from there.”
Curling Canada has said it will not release the final plan for the 18-team fields until all provincial and territorial championships have been completed.
Most provinces and territories cancelled their playdowns and named representatives but there are still a few to be decided.