Young Blood rocking the house
Former junior champ throwing second rocks, acting as vice- skip
Three- time B. C. junior curling champ Dailene Sivertson is now vice- skip and throwing rocks with Kelly Scott’s veteran Kelowna team in the B. C. Scotties at North Shore Winter Club.
They call her Young Blood, a fresh- faced 21- year- old rock thrower and broom holder who has added an element of youth to a women’s curling rink that is considered veteran, but hardly at the Clairol Nice n Easy stage just yet.
Three- time B. C. junior champion Dailene Sivertson is throwing second rocks and serving as vice- skip for Kelly Scott’s Kelowna team in this week’s B. C. Scotties at the North Shore Winter Club.
Scott, 34, and a world champion in 2007, is making her eighth appearance in the last nine years at provincials and looking to make it three consecutive titles. Sasha Carter, 37, is throwing third rocks and Jacquie Armstrong, 35, is lead.
It was at the end of last season, however, that Scott’s longtime third Jeanna Schraeder announced she was pregnant and would be taking the 20112012 season off. Scott quickly reached out to Sivertson, a Victoria product about to move out of the junior ranks.
“When I got the call, I was just in awe,” Sivertson said Monday after the Scott rink won its opening- round draw 9- 5 over Nicole Backe, a Nanaimo resident curling out of Royal City Club.
“Kelly is somebody I’ve watched for years and wanted to be like. When I got a chance to play, there was no hesitation. I thought this was the experience of a lifetime.”
Sivertson got a leave from her job with a chartered accountant firm and relocated to Kelowna in September.
“I’m having a great time playing with them … learned a lot,” said Sivertson. “There’s always new things that come up and they’re really good at preparing me to go out and play big games and what to expect. When we get out there it just feels comfortable and we just go out there and curl.”
The team played in half a dozen events in the fall, reaching the quarter- finals of World Curling Tour events in Vernon and Winnipeg while fashioning an overall record of 19- 16.
“Kind of hot and cold,” says Scott. “We lost a lot of nailbiter games and learned from those as a team.”
There is a lot of good- natured bantering and teasing about the age gap between Sivertson and the rest of the rink. And while the three thirtysomethings are hardly doddering old sweepers, Scott laughingly says that Sivertson’s presence means “we feel like it all of a sudden.
“We were excited to bring youth and enthusiasm on board,” adds Scott. “We kind of feed off one another. And it’s been good. She’s put everything into it we could have asked for.
“We’re just trying to show and teach and tell Dailene everything we’ve seen over the years and she’s been so receptive to it.
“Off the ice, it’s been a really good mix, really good chemistry. Dailene can laugh at herself and we have a lot of fun and keep it loose.”
Scott played around with a couple of different lineup combinations on the fall cashspiel circuit, with Sivertson throwing third rocks and then with Carter holding the broom and calling line at times before settling on the current configuration.
“We went back to this one as a kind of meet in the middle scenario,” said Scott. “We’re locked into it and committed to it and we’ll give it a go.”
Scott says the need to jell as a group, to find common ground in terms of throwing style and on- ice communication, meant the rink has done far more practising than in the past.
“We’ve put a lot of hours into working together as a team, probably more than we have the last two seasons. We just hope we can kind of bring everything to the ice this week. We’re all well prepared and excited to get going.”
Scott used three- enders in the first and sixth to build a 7- 3 lead over Backe. She had a chance to blow the game open with five in the eighth, but wrecked on her own rock in the eight- foot while attempting a takeout of a Backe rock in the back of the four- foot. Backe wound up with a steal of one.
“I’d like that one back,” said Scott. “The ice was changing a bit as the game went on. If I could throw it again, I would have taken more ice or thrown it differently.”
HOG LINE: Scott moved to 2- 0 later Monday with a 5- 3 win over Roselyn Craig of Victoria in the evening draw. Allison Mcinnes of Kamloops, Marla Mallett of Royal City and Jen Rusnell of Prince George were also at 2- 0 ... Mallett, who beat Backe 6- 3 in the evening draw, stole two in the ninth and three in the 10th to beat clubmate Kelley Law 9- 8 in a battle of former B. C. champions in the morning ... Round- robin competition continues through Thursday, with morning draws at 10: 30 a. m. and evening draws at 6: 30 p. m.