Competitive curler Grace Holyoke will be featured on the Elora Curling Club’s float for the village’s Dominion Day parade on July 1.
“We thought this is a great opportunity [to showcase] Grace’s accomplishments and then put a float in the parade and basically … promote the club and awareness that we have had great success with our members,” said Elora Curling Club president Brad Sheridan.
Holyoke, 20, and her team won the Provincial Junior Women’s Curling Championship and came second at the Canadian Junior Women’s Curling Championship this year.
But the road to get there wasn’t easy.
The team was formed in the 2016-17 season.
Team Armstrong included skip Hailey Armstrong, vice Holyoke, lead Marcia Richardson and second Lindsay Dubue.
“It’s hard with a new team, especially in curling because a lot of it has to do with dynamics and how you get along with each other … you want to be with a team for a while, so that was a struggle,” Holyoke said.
“We had to get over the team dynamics, the communication part first but somehow we all just kind of clicked and the season went really well for us.”
However, the team struggled on the road to becoming provincial champions.
At the provincial qualifier it lost its first game and also its last game.
“If we won that we were going and then if we lost we were out, so we were out and it was just devastating because we had not lost an event that year,” Holyoke said. “It was very weird for us.”
The team was put in a challenge round to duke it out for the seventh and eighth spots at provincials. Again, they lost their first game.
“Then we had to grind it out the next day, we had to win three in a row,” Holyoke said.
“Our first game was against the junior champion from two years ago so that was really scary; went down to the last rock.
“Second game went down to the last rock and third game for some reason we just played pretty much 100 per cent and … we were off early, but it was just the scariest thing ever but we won. We got through the challenge round.”
At provincials the team again lost its first game but made it to the finals and beat out Team Willingford.
“It went down to the last rock and we had to get three in the last end and it was just craziness, but … we won and it was very exciting,” Holyoke said.
As provincial champion, Team Armstrong became Team Ontario and in January the women travelled to Victoria, British Columbia to compete against the best junior curlers in the country.
Team Ontario played against other provinces and had a 10-0 record going into the final, earning the bye before the final game.
“We did not expect to do that well. It was really hard. There were some games that we definitely shouldn’t have won because the other team had a shot to win and we were lucky they missed it,” Holyoke said.
But in the end Team Alberta beat the Ontario team in the finals, taking the Canadian championship.
“We got to the final and we lost in the final which was really sad,” Holyoke said.
“It was the first game we had lost there and it was on TV and if we’d won that we were going to be Team Canada going to Korea.”
But the loss has fueled her passion for next year.
“It was just so heartbreaking because that’s just the ultimate goal,” Holyoke said. “I have another year so that’s the goal for next year.”
Holyoke and Dubue have already formed next year’s team with the Willingford sisters they took on in the 2016 provincial championships.
The newly-formed Team Willingford is working with curling champion Rachel Homan’s trainer and coach.
“Now that we know what we need to win nationals and win worlds, we’ve just surrounded ourselves with people that we know will get us there and we’re going to work really hard,” Holyoke said.
However, she’s training on her own because although she goes to school at the University of Ottawa she is home in Elora for the summer.
“It’s hard [with] the three of them being in Ottawa and me being here,” she said. “They all live in Ottawa, they’ve grown up there.
“So that’s the hard part about this summer, but it’s fine.”
Come July 1, Holyoke will be busy riding in the Dominion Day on the float of the Elora Curling Club, her first curling club.
The float will feature a giant birthday cake for Canada with a curling rock at the top of the cake along with two curler silhouettes.
Holyoke will likely be sitting in the back of the truck that’s pulling the float, Sheridan said.
