Reconnection, competition, a playoff qualification and fourth-place finish.
Okotoks skip Atina Ford Johnston got a little bit of everything out of her return to the national stage at the Curling Canada Everest Canadian Seniors Curling Championship, held Dec. 3-9 in Vernon, B.C.
“We’re very proud of the effort we put in and how well we competed with the other teams,” said Ford Johnston. “We really felt like we belonged, which is pretty cool because when you go to an event like that you’re never sure what’s going to happen.
“And we just made the most of it and enjoyed every moment and really appreciated the social connections that we could recreate with people from before.”
Team Alberta — which also featured third Shannon Morris from Sherwood Park, second Sheri Pickering from Irricana and lead Cori Morris out of Calgary — posted a 7-3 mark in the competition, including three straight victories to open the event.
In the playoffs, the eventual gold medallists Ontario, skipped by Susan Froud, edged Alberta by a 5-3 count in the semifinal. The host B.C. took the bronze by a 7-3 score over Alberta.
“We were really, really close, within a half an inch of going to a gold medal match which is pretty cool for us,” she said.
Ford Johnston was named the MVP and most sportsmanlike, among skips, at the national event.
The Okotokian is no stranger to high-level competition.
Ford Johnston is an Olympic gold medallist as the alternate on the Sandra Schmirler rink that took the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano by storm along with a world championship title and junior world championship bronze on her resume. Cori Morris was part of Cheryl Bernard’s Olympic silver medallist squad at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.
“We were told that it was a great event going into it, that it would be second to none and that the sponsorship was one of the most amazing sponsors,” Ford Johnston said. “That’s exactly what we experienced, it was almost like the old-time Scotties and Brier’s bonspiels idea that I grew up playing in.
“It was a lot about competition on the ice, but also a whole bunch of reconnecting socially with people that you knew in junior competitions, in ladies, in other aspects of your life.
“It was a big, fun community event with competition on the ice too.”
The team joined forces through a series of connections in the sport and has been a couple of years in the works.
The unique format saw a significant lead time from provincials in the spring to nationals in the late fall.
That time was used to raise funds through a pub night in Sherwood Park and a 50-50 raffle in Okotoks, along with individual practice time and two bonspiels, the Ladies Alberta Open in Okotoks and another event in Beaumont.
“We didn’t have a lot of time to practice together; in fact, we only had team practice this fall, but we practised individually,” she said. “That’s how we have to operate because we’re so busy in our own lives in various ways.
“We had to be responsible and accountable to each other to go out and individually practice.”
Ford Johnston said the team has committed to go for provincials once again in early 2024, noting getting to the top in Alberta is no easy task.
“You always learn something from an event like this so hopefully we can take those lessons forward,” she said. “If we ever get the opportunity to wear Alberta blue again and go to a national championship, maybe we can refine a few of those things that we would have done differently.”
