Shuster, Christensen Backs To The Wall

While the veteran teams—skipped by John Shuster and Tabitha Peterson—were resting up following the 2021 world championships, the young guns—led by Korey Dropkin and Cory Christensen—stepped up to win the U.S. men’s and women’s titles.

Day one of the U.S. Olympic Team Trials playoffs is complete and one young gun, actually a young buck, is on the brink of eliminating a veteran for an Olympic berth in Beijing.

Dropkin’s Duluth, MN outfit walloped Shuster’s defending Olympic champions from Chaska, MN by an 8-4 count in just eight ends of the first best-of-three playoff series. This means Team Dropkin has to win just one of their next two head-to-head matches to win the title and Olympic team honors.

Meanwhile, Peterson’s defending Trials champions from St. Paul, MN took game one of their best-of-three against Christensen’s Chaska squad by an 8-7 scoreline.

Both Shuster and Peterson dominated round robin play at Baxter Arena in Omaha, NE. Shuster ran to a 9-1 won/loss record—losing to Dropkin once—while Dropkin placed second at 7-3. The Peterson foursome also went 9-1, while Christensen also finished 7-3 for second spot.

Team Shuster fell behind at the start of the match. Dropkin stole two in the first end, and scored three in the third for an early 4-1 lead. They added a second three-count in the seventh end for an 8-3 lead.

“It is what it is,” said Shuster following the match. “We’ve had our backs against the wall and had to win before, so honestly, throughout our careers we’ve all been in that position.

“A lot of the times we battle our hardest when your back is against the wall.”

Four years ago, Shuster lost the first 2017 Trials playoff match against Heath McCormick, and came back to win both remaining playoff games for the berth in PyeongChang. Team McCormick had current Shuster third Chris Plys on the squad, along with Shuster and Plys’ current nemesis—Dropkin.

Shuster went on to make an epic comeback from poor early play in South Korea, winning his last five games in a row to win Olympic gold over Sweden.

He is stubborn, after all.

Dropkin’s current third is Joe Polo, another former teammate of Shuster. The two teamed with skip Pete Fenson back in 2006 to win Olympic bronze in Turin, Italy and Polo was Shuster’s alternate in PyeongChang.

“It’s always fun playing against John, we’ve played with and against each other for probably 20 years,” said Polo. “So it’s kinda like old hat, just go out there and tee it up against Johnny.”

Polo is the designated veteran on the youthful squad known as the Young Bucks.

“They always keep me young, every day,” Polo grinned. “It’s a lot of fun playing with them, I get to kind of live vicariously through them.”

In the first women’s playoff match, Team Peterson scored a critical three count in the sixth end, right after Christensen had taken three points of her own.

“That was huge, that was probably the game changer right there,” said Peterson. “We felt like we were in control from there on out.

“It was a battle, for sure. It was kinda up and down in the first half of the game. We didn’t adjust to the ice conditions as much as we’d have liked to, it was a little different out there.”

Playoff game two, where Shuster and Christensen face elimination, takes place at 5:00 p.m. CT (men) and 8:00 p.m. CT (women) with domestic live coverage on NBCSN.