No. 3 playoff seeds at American Dream
Skip Delaney Strouse doesn’t lack confidence.
Spend a few minutes talking or getting to know the Midland, Michigan native and you’ll spot it right away. You can see it in her eyes when lining up her next shot in the hack. She has the ‘it’ factor.
“My confidence is just a fake-it-until-you-make-it type of mentality,” Strouse said. “I’m not always confident but I try to hold myself in that way regardless of how I feel. But when I’m feeling it, I’m feeling it. There’s nothing better than getting to throw a shot you want to throw.”
The confident young skip and her squad—lead Rebecca Rodgers, second Sydney Mullaney, third Anne O’Hara and alternate Susan Dudt—posted a 5-2 mark in round robin play and are the No. 3 seed heading into Saturday’s 3 vs 4 page playoff game at the 2024 U.S. Nationals in East Rutherford, N.J.
Delaney Strouse • Bob Weder-USA Curling
“Overall, we’ve had a very successful season,” Strouse said. “And on paper how we’ve done, a lot of people say ‘congratulations, you guys have had an incredible season’ … but it doesn’t always feel like that. We’ve definitely had a lot of ups and downs.”
Except it’s hard to find a lot of downs. Strouse now skips the United States’ highest-ranked women’s team at No. 13 in the world.
“We always set goals at the beginning of the season and even last year, we had a pretty successful season all things considered coming right out of juniors,” Strouse said of winning bronze at the 2023 World University Games and then finishing second at the 2023 U.S Nationals in Denver.
“But reflecting back on last season, we all decided we set our goals a little bit too low. So going into this season, we set our goals pretty high. We set our goals to qualify for the Tier 2 Slam, to make a Tier 1 Slam and we set our goal to win Nationals. I think that we were able to push ourselves a little bit more knowing the expectations for ourselves were a little bit higher.”
Bob Weder-USA Curling
It's good thing they didn’t aim low because they’re now one goal away from declaring mission accomplished.
Team Strouse shot out of the starting gate to open the 2023-24 season, capturing their first tour event way back in August, the Euro Super Series in Stirling, Scotland. They finaled in two of their next three events, winning the Mother Club Fall Curling Classic in September without tasting defeat.
“We haven’t played incredible all season. We haven’t made playoffs at every event. It’s been a balancing act of managing that momentum and our expectations of our performance,” said Strouse.
“We’re super excited with what we’ve been able to show. We haven’t been as consistent as we hoped, but we’re performing at a pretty high ceiling and that’s what we’re looking for.”
Playing in the first Grand Slam of Curling event of the season, they split their two games and didn’t qualify on the Tier 2 side of the Tour Challenge in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
Despite the brief hiccup, the results kept coming.
Sydney Mullaney • Bob Weder-USA Curling
The following week, Team Strouse advanced to the final of the Saville Grand Prix but let a 5-3 lead slip away late in a 6-5 loss to this year’s Alberta STOH champions skipped by Selena Sturmay.
Racking up the points on tour earned the Traverse City, Michigan gang an invitation into their first Tier 1 GSOC event. Despite going winless at The National in Pictou, Nova Scotia, they got another crack at a Slam in December where they went 2-2 at the Masters before falling in a tiebreaker 7-2 to Anna Hasselborg’s powerhouse crew from Sweden.
Strouse, whose twin brother Sam is playing second this week for Team Rich Ruohonen, said this year is similar to last season. They played on championship ice right before Nationals when they went 6-1 in the round robin and made their run to the finals against eventual champion Team Tabitha Peterson. Except she pointed to one key difference this week.
“Something last year that kind of happened to us was that we really peaked during round robin play and didn’t necessarily have our best performance in the playoffs,” Strouse said. “This year has been the complete opposite. We often have squeaked into the playoffs at events on tour this season and then went and won the whole thing or made the final.
Team Strouse slammin’ in Pictou • Anil Mungal-Sportsnet
“It’s pretty comforting to know we’re a playoff team and we can turn it on during the playoffs. One of our coaches texted us this morning and was like ‘championships are won on the weekend.’ Starting Saturday, it’s essentially a brand new tournament and I think that’s what our mindset will be going into the weekend.”
As the team’s main cook who loves a good salmon bowl, Strouse said it’s been a fun week competing in a new setting as they get ready to play the Saturday tiebreaker winner (Christine McMakin vs Miranda Scheel) in a win-or-go-home playoff game today at 12:00 p.m. (ET).
“The mall setting is obviously really super different,” Strouse said. “Curling here in the American Dream, they have done an amazing job in the sense that even though the conditions and environment might not be the best or a favorite for some athletes, I appreciate what it’s doing for the sport. I love seeing people walk by taking photos and so many people wanting to see what it’s about.
“In general, the environment is really fostering something really exciting in the sport. It’s not like perfect conditions in terms of ice, meeting spots and warmup areas. But not every place is perfect and I think that this is a really great place to be having this Nationals.”
Ethan Sampson plays the men’s tiebreaker • Bob Weder-USA Curling
Today’s 1 vs 2 page playoff game will feature Sarah Anderson’s team battle the defending champions, Team Peterson. Anderson scored the top seed rank by defeating Peterson 10-5 on the first day of competition.
On the men’s side, Team Shuster finished with a perfect 7-0 won/loss record after defeating Team Dropkin 8-5 on Friday night and will be the top seed today. Dropkin’s 5-2 record earned them sole possession of second place, and the spot opposite Shuster in today’s 1 vs 2 game.
The men’s 3 vs 4 playoff will feature the No. 3 seed Team Casper against the tiebreaker winner between Minnesota’s Ethan Sampson and Wisconsin’s Wesley Wendling.
All playoff games are streamed live via CurlingZone’s YouTube channel.