Holland Curling Team

Well, Saturday had its ups and downs. 

The day started at a great little breakfast place right close to the arena where we had the chance to meet a few more wonderful Sooians … does that work?  Then off to the arena for opening ceremonies.  It was great to be introduced as Team Saskatchewan for the first time!  The highlight of the opening ceremonies was definitely a speech delivered by the Chair of the Sandra Schmirler Foundation, Alan Hodgins.  I am not sure there were many dry eyes in the building as Alan did a wonderful job of reminding us all what an amazing woman Sandra was.  It has been ten years since Sandra passed and since that time the Foundation has raised over a million dollars to help babies in need.  We are so happy to be assisting with the telethon tomorrow – we will be on the phones from 10:30 – 11:30, so please call in and give generously to this great cause.

Following the opening ceremonies we were lucky enough to be participating in the Ford Hot Shots.  Tammy and Amber both qualified for the final 8.  Kim and Heather were sweeping for Tammy, while Dawn Moses (NWT) held the broom.  Me and Shelley Nichols (NFLD) swept for Amber while France Charette (QUE) held the broom.  At the conclusion of the first round we knew Tammy had made it through, she was on fire, but we weren’t so sure about Amber.  Sure enough, she just squeaked in … might have been a draw Shelley and I swept end to end that did it, hard to say. In the next round Amber caught fire and so did Kari MacLean from Ontario and the two of them anced to the final.  The final round was back and forth, Amber was behind 2 points with just the double takeout left to play.  As she did all day, Amber nailed the double for a perfect 5 points (I would take credit but at this point I was getting tired and mostly just cleaning her rocks).  Kari had to make the double to get the win and it over curled a bit, giving the title of Ford Hot Shot to Amber!  The fans had been encouraging me to do a hood-slide, but at this stage in the game I was a little sweaty and I didn’t want to smudge Amber's shiny new car.

Obviously our game didn’t go quite as we planned.  We had a great start, but it appeared to be a classic case of peaking too soon ; ) We can’t take anything away from PEI, they battled through the first four ends keeping it close and then came out strong in the second half. We found out after the game that the loss actually rests solely with our new "coach" Nick.  We met Nick and Karen last night at our banquet and they have been officially recruited as Team Sask Supporters! After the game Karen informed us that she and Nick were enjoying a few bevies during the game and that Nick quit drinking when we were winning. They are pretty sure that was the turing point, it could be a long week for Nick if that is the case.haha. 

We had a great dinner with our families this evening and the rest of the evening off to rest for a big day tomorrow.  Have I mentioned that our driver Elaine is awesome? Thanks to Elaine for making dinner reservations and recruiting an extra driver for our families tonight, she is really going the extra mile for us and we appreciate every little bit!

Tomorrow we take on Team Canada in the afternoon and Newfoundland in the evening.  Please take some time to call in to the telethon during the day, every bit helps. 

Sask Super 5^th in the Soo.