The Carleton Ravens men’s curling team came home empty-handed from the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) national championships for the second straight year, finishing this year’s event in Kamloops, B.C. from March 20-24 with a 1-6 record.
“It obviously wasn’t as good as we wanted to be because we had higher expectations, but it was a good run overall just to get to nationals,” said Greg Bridges, the team’s second.
The Ravens won their first game of the tournament, beating the University of Manitoba by a score of 9-5 in the first draw.
Carleton lost a narrow 8-5 decision in draw two to the eventual champions at the University of Waterloo, and the Ravens proceeded to lose each of their remaining games to finish with a 1-6 record in round-robin play.
Art Miskew, Carleton’s coach, said the tough loss against Waterloo might have changed their fate for the rest of the tournament.
“If we won that second game against Waterloo, the team that ended up winning the tournament, it could’ve been a whole different week for us,” he said.
“We were right in there with them. It was a close game that could have gone either way, but it didn’t go our way this time.”
Miskew added that he thought this year’s Ravens squad was actually better than last year’s team, but he said the competition at nationals was much more difficult this time.
Bridges, a member of last year’s team that went 2-5 at nationals, said he thought this year’s showing was disappointing.
“I honestly thought this year we would have a better chance than we did last year, but after a couple of tough games for us, it didn’t go the way we wanted it to,” he said.
Carleton has made the curling national championships for the last two years, earning a spot in the national field because of a silver medal last year in the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) championships and a bronze medal in this year’s provincials.
“Getting that medal at provincials was something we wanted to do to go on to B.C. this year,” Bridges said. “And we made the most of going to nationals this year even though we didn’t do as well as we wanted on the ice.”
Miskew said his team’s accomplishments in the past two seasons are even more impressive because the Ravens curling program has only been around for those two years.
“Last year was our first year back because they brought back the curling program at Carleton just two years ago,” he said. “We’ve made nationals both years for the men and the women’s team was a game away from nationals this year.”
“We’re also hearing from new players coming up who know we have a team now, and that may influence whether they choose to come here or not, so I think it’s a positive for the school, and now we have to discuss what we have to do to encourage this program to continue growing.”
Miskew said one way to help his teams get better results would be for them to play together more often, since they all play on different club teams unlike many of their competitors.
“If we can get people talking about playing together as a team year-round, hopefully we can grow in the next two or three years with the same guys and be a tough team,” he said. “But they’ll have to figure out if they want to do that, which means practicing much more.”
Despite his team’s youth compared to most of their competition, Miskew said their experiences at nationals would only help the curling program going forward.
“Getting to nationals again next year will be very hard, but I believe we’ll do better,” he said.
