CDDHS girls curling team excel at OFSAA

March 26, 2014 · 0 Comments

For such a young team, the Centre Dufferin District High School girls curling team has done remarkably well in their sport.

Many athletes who go to the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations (OFSAA) do so in their senior year after getting a few years of competition behind them.

The CDDHS curling team has three grade ten students, and one grade 11 student on the squad, and they all have a lot of experience on the ice sheets.

The team went to the 2014 OFSAA competition in Brampton on March 19–21, after qualifying by winning their Zone competition on February 1–2, and moving on to the regional competition.

“It was another curling experience. It was fun.” Said team lead Leah Moreth. Although Leah said the pressure of competing at that level didn’t seem to affect her as she has been “curling for six or seven years.”

For team vice, Kaelyn Gregory, the fact that all the teams were tops in their region was a bonus.

“It’s fun going to provincial tournaments because the competition is the highest level of competition,” Kaelyn said. “Every one is kind of on the same playing field – they’re all about the same level of skill. There’s a lot of close games usually. There’s always great people to meet and you make a lot of good friends.”

The team played to a tie in their pool, but couldn’t advance after losing a tie-breaking shoot-out to another team.

“Everyone on the team throws one rock and tries to get it on the button – the button is seven points and goes out from there,” explained Kaelyn of how the shoot-out works.

The ‘button’ is the centre circle in the ‘house’ of rings on a curling sheet.

Courtney Holmes is in the second position on the team and is another player with a lot of experience having been a curler for ten years.

“We did lots of practices and worked on our weaknesses,” Courtney said of the team’s preparation to attend OFSAA. “We knew it was going to be stronger competition at the highest level. We knew we would just go and do our best. Making it there was the goal.”

At this high level of competition, Courtney said she was happy with the teams results adding “winning two games was better than not winning anything at all.”

Team Skip, Anna Boulanger, was very happy with the way the team performed against other squads from around the province.

“We knew that the games were going to be really, really tough,” Anna said. “I personally think we did very well considering how high the level of skill is. I’m really proud of my girls, and I think we did very well.”

As with most sports when you compete at the provincial level, it’s hard to size up a team from another city or town that you have never seen play.

“That’s how it was for us,” Anna explained. “One of the teams that we came against was from Ottawa. We had never seen them before, we didn’t know who they were – we went into it with an open mind and tried our best.”

There was a total of 24 teams in the event, with teams being divided into pools to play a round-robin style tournament to advance.

In the end, the team from Brockville came out with the gold medal.

The four girls on the team have plans to continue in the sport next year and hopefully advance even farther.

“I learned that teamwork and communication is key,” Anna said. “I learned a lot of things we have to work on for next year to get to that level again.”

By Brian Lockhart