There Were Other Teams

It may be difficult to remember in a few weeks, but there were other teams at Omaha.

There was the Dakotan flair of Jed Brundidge’s team, buoyed by a bunch of great athletes like Lance Wheeler, Cameron Rittenour and Evan Workin, some of whom latched onto the sport later in their lives. 

The skip of few words definitely had even fewer words after their winless finish—the only team in either field to finish in second place every time out—but they were the third team chronologically to qualify in the field of six after a couple of last place finishes at nationals, so their accomplishment was being there faster than half the field.

We saw Delaney Strouse take a team of juniors and frighten all the older professionals, losing three games in the 10th with hammer. 

The screamin’ skip from Michigan wasn’t supposed to own one hammer in the 10th of a tie game, let alone three, and you can bet the next time she’s in a field like this, she’s going to nail down a couple of W’s.

There were the plucky Philadelphians, known as Team Dunnam. 

Bookended by brothers, his non-funded team began with a thumping of the Young Bucks then gave a bunch of teams a scare—and one of them a six-ender—but nothing further. A fearless and close-knit team of brothers and cousins in their 20s might be the extra depth the country needs in the next cycle.

There was also the hastily-assembled Team Persinger, who tried to follow the Einarson formula of What If We Just Put A Bunch Of Skips Together. 

Bringing Craig Brown back from the cold was a veteran move, but a lack of familiarity (other than seeing Greg Persinger throw fourth stones) could only get this team so far.

There was Team Rhyme. 

Another grassroots team from Minnesota, because you can never have enough of those, Kim Rhyme stole a win against Peterson on the second day—the only team to beat them all week—lyrically jumping to a 3-1 start, but then the prose started turning purple as the week matured. In the end, Rhyme ran out of reason.

Team Bear started out mauling Sinclair in the opening draw, then was declawed after Madison Bear had to sit for a day due to COVID protocols, and the team of three played like they were outnumbered. Time for the national Under-25 team to hibernate for a bit.

We saw Team Sinclair featuring, it could be argued, the best skip in the country. Jamie was tasked to bail out her young team occasion after occasion, and after giving up 20 stolen points in the first four games, simply ran out of buckets. She has an interesting future, given she’s had a motley of different lineups in her past. Find Jamie Sinclair a great team, is all we’re asking.

We saw Sinclair’s mixed doubles partner suffer a similar fate. Through an 0-3 start, Rich Ruohonen and his experienced team of olds got the business end of the breaks, then won five of their next six games before running out of time. If the Trials were two weeks long, maybe they’d have made it. But if the Trials were two weeks long, the ice techs would’ve turned in their badges.

The remaining teams coalesced into primetime mainstream cable sports. Team Christensen was one of them. Christensen is a rock-solid team, pun intended because it always is, from lead to skip. 

The knock on Cory Christensen is that she plays a little too conservative, doesn’t go for big scores, can’t make the big one, and that was disproven all week. But once she ran into Team Peterson for two games, Christensen lived up to her criticism. It wasn’t their week, but they are going to be back, and at least Vicky Persinger still has a shot at getting to the Olympics through mixed doubles next month in the Netherlands.

And of course, the Young Bucks. They’ve been “the other team” for so long, and for one magical game they were not. They had their round robin struggles, as most did, but the defending national champions found stability and even bagged a W against Shuster at the end of the week. 

Korey Dropkin looked the part and was extremely calm, confident and in control for precisely 16 of the 30 ends in the Trials final series. Joe Polo was throwing like it was 2006. But that shot for four, man. You take that every time against that man in that situation, and you don’t look back. Korey was the first to tell you he threw it poorly. It was the definitive moment in the series, and despite that they still had opportunities to assert themselves. It’s what top teams do. But they didn’t hang another score of two until the final game, once they were down four. Their time will come. They’re so close.

I mention all these other teams not to ignore Shuster and Peterson’s accomplishments. (Five straight Olympics—four as a skip—is ridiculous in any country. So is defending your title by changing skips.) But we’re going to spend countless paragraphs and podcasts on these teams leading up to the Olympics.

 Having a healthy and robust Trials made these two teams better. The strength of curling in our country is not defined by our top teams, but by the field. Brundidge, Strouse, Persinger, Bear, Dunnam, Rhyme, Ruohonen, Sinclair, Dropkin, and Christensen were the other teams, and they helped make this possible.

“Kor, I’m just gonna tell you the truth, that is the hardest—what you guys [unintelligible] the hardest I’ve ever worked to beat anybody in my entire life. You guys are unbelievable.”