Holly aiming to keep her cool in Sweden
Fair City curler Holly WilkieMilne is flying the Scotland flag at the World Junior Championships.
The former Perth Academy student has jetted out to Jönköping, Sweden to compete with Team Henderson.
Round-robin play swept into life on Sunday and the Scots opened up with a terrific 9-7 win against reigning champions Canada.
That was followed yesterday morning by a narrow defeat to the USA, with Switzerland next up last night. Also on the opposite side of the ice this week will be Japan, Norway, Latvia, Korea, Sweden and Denmark.
The top four teams in the roundrobin rankings qualify for the semifinals, which take place on Saturday.
Wilkie-Milne plays alongside Katie McMillan, Lisa Davie and skip Fay Henderson.
They gained a place at the showpiece spectacle after Russia were expelled from the competition and two other countries – ranked ahead of Scotland on the basis of performances the last time the event was held – were unable to accept invitations to replace them.
Team Henderson had, though, given every indication that they would earn their place in Jönköping with a succession of wins at events at home and abroad, before victory at the Scottish Junior Championships earned them a place in the World Junior B Championships where they could have gained promotion to the main event.
The subsequent cancellation of that competition, due to Covid, was bitterly disappointing but the team is now delighted to be pulling on the national colours among the world’s best. “It’s been great to get to the World Juniors through the last possible way,” said skip Henderson.
“It’s a real silver lining to be able to be here and hopefully be able to show everyone that we can compete at this level.”
After the opening win against Canada, she added: “It was great to get the first game under our belts and get a win. Team Canada’s always a big game and it’s great to get the better of them.”
Wilkie-Milne is a member of the British curling squad and often trains at the National Curling Academy (NCA) in Stirling.
Team skip Henderson explained: “We’ve had the NCA open until this week which has been ideal for training.
“A lot of the teams that have trained in the National Curling Academy this season have done well, at the Olympics, World Championships and European Championships.
“So I think we can take that as inspiration because it’s shown that curling in Scotland is at such a high level thanks to all the training we’ve had. We have played quite a lot of junior events and done quite well, so hopefully we can just keep that going here.
“We’ve played against a couple of the teams here and have competed well and we’ve prepared quite well in the last couple of weeks.
“We’ve put in the effort in a lot of training sessions together to brush up on a few things which has hopefully really helped us.”
Live games will be available to watch through The Curling Channel in partnership with Recast.
It was great to get the first game under our belts and get a win. Team Canada is always a big game