Local Women's Curling Team Seeks Top Spot

Monday, 27 January 2020 09:24

Team Balsdon will be representing Woodstock when they compete at the 2020 Ontario Scotties. The major bonspiel starts today in Cornwall and the round robin runs all week.

WOODSTOCK - Team Balsdon will be representing Woodstock today when they compete at the 2020 Ontario Scotties.

The major bonspiel starts today in Cornwall and the round robin runs all week.

Rachelle Strybosch is the only team member who lives in Woodstock and she says they're one of nine ladies teams out of the province to qualify.

"We lost the final last year to Rachel Homan, who is obviously one of the best teams in the world. So having that experience of already playing in a final against her is huge for us, it was a close game, so we know we can stay in there. You don't have to beat them in the round robin, you need to beat them in the final. So we just hope to have a good week, make the playoffs, and then kind of take it from there, just each game by each game and hope to get back to that final."

The playoffs will begin over the weekend after the round robin ends this Friday.

She says it'll help to have the experience of having played against nearly all teams in the province.

"I don't know if we've actually played Homan this year, but all of the other teams in Ontario we have had a chance to play them this season, which has been really nice. How it kind of works for curling is you can kind of pick and choose your schedule. So if you want to play a lot you can enter into a lot of the big cash spiels. You can go into any of them besides the Pinty's, the Grand Slam's on TV, those are invite-only. We've been lucky to have a chance to play all of the teams in Ontario so we're not going in completely blind."

The winning team will represent Ontario at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.

Their first game is tomorrow morning at 8:30 against Team Harrison and Heart FM will be providing updates on Team Balsdon throughout the week. You can follow along their progress online here as well.