Canadian junior curling champions slinging beer at Scotties

M&M Canadian Juniors Team Alberta Skip Jocelyn Peterman led her team to a 12-6 victory over Manitoba.
Photograph by: Handout/CNSPICS , Michael Burns Photo Ltd.

RED DEER, Alta. — To prepare for next week's trip to Sweden to play at the WCF world junior curling championships, three members of Jocelyn Peterman's freshly crowned Canadian championship team from Red Deer are being exposed to high-level competition this week at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.

But they’re not doing it in the traditional sense — instead they’re doing their part to support their hometown event as volunteers.

So while Canada’s top women’s curlers are doing their job on the ice, Canada’s top junior curlers are doing the job behind the bar, filling drinks in the Heartstop Lounge party room.

“It’s been pretty cool,” said Brittany Tran, the third for Peterman’s team, which opens play as Team Canada at the world juniors a week from Saturday against Zuzana Hajkova of the Czech Republic in Oestersund. “Lots of people know who we are now and they’ve been congratulating us. I’m like, ‘Hi, thanks, I don’t know who you are.’ But that’s cool.”

Life has been awfully cool for Peterman, Tran, second Rebecca Konschuh and lead Kristine Anderson (the team is coached by Peterman’s mother, Nancy McInerny) since capturing the women’s title at the M&M Meat Shops Canadian junior championships earlier this month in Napanee, Ont.

The Albertans, all of whom are 18 and still have two years of junior eligibility remaining after this season, defeated Manitoba’s Shannon Birchard 12-6 in the final, with a steal of five in the fifth end as the turning point.

Since then, it’s been a whirlwind of arranging for advance schoolwork, practising in Calgary and in Red Deer, slinging beers at the Scotties, and, oh yes, preparing for the burden of being a favourite at the world juniors based simply on the Maple Leaf emblem on their team jackets.

“I always wanted to wear the Maple Leaf,” said Konschuh. “I always thought about it more for the Scotties than in juniors. But ever since I got on this team, I knew we were capable of doing it and we worked hard towards that, for sure.”

The 2010-11 season was filled with heartache — the team lost the Alberta junior final to Calgary’s Nadine Chyz (who will be the Team Canada fifth player in Sweden) as well as the Canada Winter Games gold-medal game to B.C. — but those setbacks only stoked the fires for this season.

“We learned a lot about how to play finals last year,” said Peterman, who grew up in around a curling rink — her dad, Lowell, was the icemaker at the Red Deer Curling Centre, and with both parents working, she would take the bus to the rink after school instead of being home alone.

“When we lost the provincial (junior) final, we went really hard in the first couple ends (and found themselves down 4-0 after three), so we learned to take a couple ends to calm the nerves. And in the Canada Games final, we played the whole game open (and lost 3-1), and we knew after that we didn’t want to do that again.”

“It made us a lot more determined to come out and actually accomplish something,” added Konschuh. “We wanted to get a gold medal this year. The opportunities don’t happen very often so you want to take advantage.”

Edmonton’s Brendan Bottcher foursome (third Evan Asmussen, second Landon Bucholz and lead Bryce Bucholz) opens play on the men’s side of the world juniors the same day in Oestersund, taking on China’s Xiuyue Ma.