Webster, Ramsay at Olympics
Peterborough native team leader for Canada’s curling teams; former Pete behind bench for Slovakia hockey team
The Peterborough connections to the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics continue to reveal themselves.
As former Peterborough Petes defenceman Peter Ceresnak slammed home the winning goal in Slovakia’s 3-2 upset win over the Olympic Athletes from Russia in the opening game of the men’s hockey tournament on Wednesday, standing behind the bench was Craig Ramsay.
Peterborough native Paul Webster is working behind the scenes at his fourth Olympics as team leader for Canada’s Olympic curling teams.
Ramsay, 66, starred for the Petes from 1967-71 and his wife Susan (nee Gibson) is a Peterborough native. He took on the chal- lenge of coaching Slovakia when former Buffalo Sabres player Miroslav Satan, who is the team’s general manager, asked if he was interested last summer. Ramsay played 14 NHL seasons with the Sabres before turning to coaching where he’s worked as both a head coach and assistant coach in the NHL for nearly 30 years on eight different teams.
Ramsay’s brother-in-law and former Petes teammate Doug Gibson said they were sitting in his mother Carol Gibson’s backyard in Peterborough last summer when Ramsay’s phone rang.
“He looked at his phone and said ‘I have no idea where this phone number would be from,’” Gibson said.
It was Satan from Slovakia. When he got off the phone, Ramsay told his family of the offer and asked them what they thought.
“We told him it was too good an opportunity to pass up to go to the Olympics,” Gibson said.
The offer also extended to coaching Slovakia at the next two world championships this spring and 2019 in Bratislava, Slovakia.
“He was brought in to overhaul the whole program,” Gibson said.
The Slovaks finished runnerup to Russia in two pre-Olympic tournaments in Germany and Norway. All his players play in pro leagues and didn’t have a lot of time together prior to the Olympics.
Ramsay told the Buffalo News prior to the tournament: “It’s been quite interesting. I want them to be successful. We’re trying to do so many new things. It’s hard enough when you have them six days a week, let alone a few days at a time. We’re not quite good enough, but our goaltending has been spectacular. I just don’t want them to give up.”
So, should Canada end up playing Slovakia who will the Gibson family be cheering for?
“Slovakia,” Gibson said. “Blood is thicker than water.”
Webster’s first time as Canada’s team leader for curling was the 2014 Sochi Games where Brad Jacobs and Jennifer Jones led Canada to its first ever double-gold performance at the Olympics. This time around John Morris and Kaitlyn Lawes already have a gold in their pocket in the first ever mixed doubles event and now Kevin Koe and Rachel Homan are aiming for Canada’s first ever triple gold.
Webster, who now calls Calgary home, was an assistant coach for both the Canadian men’s and women’s teams at the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy in 2006 and with the men’s side in Vancouver in 2010.
His role now is more off-ice, looking after athlete accommodations, food services and overseeing such things as media, sponsors and families -- among other things.
Webster started curling at age 10 at the Peterborough Curling Club where he competed as a junior and played for his high school, Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School.
A teacher for five years, he took a leave of absence in 2004 to pursue his Level 4 coaching certification at the University of Calgary. He began working for the Canadian Curling Association at the time and it went from there. He obtained his bachelor of kinesiology degree at Wilfrid Laurier University and bachelor of education degree at the University of Ottawa. Upon graduation in 1999, he started as a teacher at Peterborough Collegiate.