Six-Year Curling Snapshot

Let’s go back six years ago, on this very Dec 9-10 weekend in 2017.

Quite a lot was going on in the curling world.

The Canadian Olympic Trials wrapped up in Kanata, Ont. The men’s final was something else, with Kevin Koe making an agonizing draw to the four-foot to edge Mike McEwen in the championship final.

Ben Hebert launched his brush into the stratosphere while Koe actually yelled and achieved airborne status.

At the same time, Brent Laing delivered the biggest fist pump of his life while Marc Kennedy just stood there, probably exhausted, soaking it in for a second or two.

Quite the moment.

In the women’s final, Rachel Homan’s Ottawa crew handled Chelsea Carey’s Winnipeg opponents to book their tickets to PyeongChang.

It was to be a blue Games for both four-player Olympic squads. Team Koe fell in both the semifinal and bronze medal games, while Homan and Co. failed to make the playoffs.

Homan’s win meant their Scotties spot as Team Canada went to the previous year’s runner-up—Michelle Englot’s team of Manitobans.

Englot, the Saskatchewan import, had already announced her impending retirement, meaning her final STOH would be quite the sendoff.

Of course, history shows that Englot never really went away ... she’s still playing.

Another huge event was finishing off that same weekend in the Czech Republic—the WCF’s Olympic Qualifying event.

Italy’s Joel Retornaz grabbed one of the coveted Olympic berths, and his lads went absolutely crazy. 

Quite the show.

You had to feel for the Czechs, though… their men’s team suffered two heartbreaking qualifying losses and that meant a total of three losses in their past four OQE qualifying matches, covering the 2014 and 2018 Winter Games.

Veteran skip Jiri Snitl and his brother would soon leave high-performance competition, with Jiri eventually joining the WCF in a development role.

Just another weekend, in December, some six years ago.

But a big one, where dreams came true for some—and were ruthlessly dashed for others.