Team McCarville looking to make dreams come true on home ice

Since Krista McCarville’s team won late January’s Northern Ontario provincials in dramatic fashion — cued by an incredible comeback and a final that came down to the last stone McCarville threw — the skip has had some emotional mornings. 

“I’ll wake up in the most excited and happiest moment, because I’ve dreamt that we won the Scotties, that I’m hugging my team and running and hugging my family in the stands,” McCarville says, with a laugh. “And the next moment I feel like, ‘Oh my goodness, it was just a dream.’ And then I’m sad.” 

The two-time Scotties silver medallist has a chance to make good on that dream — and the bigger one she’s had since she was a kid — starting Friday right at home in Thunder Bay as she gets set to compete in her 12^th national championship.   

The Scotties Tournament of Hearts opens with an evening draw at Fort William Gardens, when the home team, Northern Ontario — comprised of Thunder Bay’s own McCarville, Ashley Sippala and Sarah Potts, Sudbury’s Kendra Lilly and import Andrea Kelly from Fredericton, N.B. — takes on B.C. in front of what should be a raucous crowd. 

“I hope people aren’t expecting quiet curling etiquette-type cheering,” says Potts, the team’s long-time lead, laughing. “We’ve got some rowdy fans, I’ll be honest.” 

Those fans will be pent up, too, having waited for this moment for years. The 2022 Scotties was held in Thunder Bay in an empty arena during the COVID pandemic, with only 400-or-so friends and family allowed in to see playoffs and cheer on Team McCarville as they made a run to the final before losing to Team Einarson from Manitoba. 

With COVID limitations in place, Thunder Bay couldn’t really showcase the qualities that have led many to consider the city the curling capital of Canada. Now it’s time to shine, though. There are ice sculptures of curlers around the city. Snowshoe art of the Scotties logo and a curler is visible from the air as people fly into Thunder Bay. And on Friday the night will ring out with moose calls, a special Northern Ontario encouragement coaxed out of large coffee cans with laces strung inside that McCarville will hear from family, friends and students (she’s a teacher, though she’s out of the classroom for the next week and a bit). 

The home squad will be in tough in this 18-team field, which is headlined by world No. 1 Team Canada, the defending national and world champions led by Ontario’s Rachel Homan, whose team has lost just four of its last 49 games.  

McCarville’s team enters this national championship on a streak of its own, having won their last three bonspiels, including a very tight provincials that saw them produce a miracle four-point final end in their last round-robin game to win by one and advance to the playoffs. In the final, they were down two early and, after back-to-back steals in the seventh and eighth, entered the last end tied up and won it on their final stone.  

“We celebrated probably bigger than any of us have ever celebrated in our whole lives, because it just meant so much to us to make it to a home Scotties,” Potts says. 

“It was kind of electric,” adds Rick Lang, the team’s coach and Potts’s dad, with a laugh. “As tough as that was, it’s going to help make us more game ready, I believe.” 

Thunder Bay has been ready to see Team McCarville play in this Scotties for months. That’s because even before the team qualified in late January, “Krista’s face was everywhere,” explains Potts — her skip gracing Scotties advertisements featured at the rink and on tables at restaurants all over the city. 

“It’s my face and it’s Rachel [Homan]’s face all over, but I’m like, ‘She’s in already because she’s Team Canada, but we still have to make it there,’” McCarville says, laughing. “A lot of my students were like, ‘Mrs. McCarville, your face is here, your face is there, you’re all over the place!’ I had to explain that we still had to qualify.”  

Now with their ticket punched and that pressure off, it’s show time. Team McCarville had back-to-back podium finishes at the Scotties in 2022 (second) and 2023 (third) but missed the playoffs last year, their first season playing with a five-woman rotation. (Potts, Sippala and Lilly rotate on the front end.) “Things hadn’t quite fallen into place yet,” Lang says.

Officially ranked 17^th in Canada, McCarville’s team operates differently from other top rinks in that they play fewer than half the number of events — just five this season in the lead-up to the Scotties — and focus on practice, maintaining a curling-work-life balance that works for them.  

“We practice every day, and we work really hard at practicing. We do training weekends. So, as much as we don’t have a ton of games, we never have [played a lot of games] going into the Scotties,” Potts says. “We know that we’ve prepared differently than other teams, but we’re very prepared.”

Historically, the McCarville Method has worked very well. Her eight playoff wins at the Scotties are fourth-most all-time by a skip, behind a trio of legends in Homan, Jennifer Jones and Colleen Jones. She also ranks fourth all-time among skips in overall Scotties wins. 

And McCarville is feeling dialled-in as the big event gets set to open. “There’s something different this year. Like me, personally, I just feel more in the zone,” she says. “I feel a lot more focused this year than I’ve ever felt.”

“I think everybody on the team has an increased focus on what the outcomes are, what the possibilities are,” Lang adds. “Krista, she’s always been a very special player. There’s just those talents you see in every sport, right? The person who you just go to, and it’s her. She’s putting all her energy and her focus into it, and I think she’s done a remarkable job of that this year. I’m excited to see her play.”  

Adds Potts: “I think she just sees it more and believes in it.” 

So much so that McCarville keeps waking up feeling like it’s already happened. 

The skip lets out a big sigh, thinking about accomplishing that dream — for real — in her hometown. “Just winning the Scotties is an unbelievable dream come true for me, I’ve dreamt about it since I was a kid. And to do it in front of the home crowd in our arena at the Gardens, where I’ve grown up watching hockey and skating and taking my kids there, honestly that would be an absolute dream come true,” she says. “I can’t even explain it right now. It makes me have butterflies and shivers just talking about it.

“But it’s a super-long week. I can dream about it, but as soon as it starts, it’s one game at a time.” 

Lang seconds that sentiment. He won the Brier three times, the last time in 1985, and his wife, Lorraine, was on the last Thunder Bay-based team to win the Scotties, in 1988, her second national championship win. As a coach and a father, Lang doesn’t dwell on the possibilities ahead. 

“Sometimes I don’t allow myself to go there,” he says. “It’s obviously a golden opportunity, but there’s 17 other teams trying to make sure that doesn’t happen. We’ve been competitive at the Scotties, and our goal is to be competitive again this year and pull off a few playoff wins so that we’re in a place to go and win the gold. We’re realistic about it as well. We know we’re going to have to be at our best.” 

“We want to win the Scotties,” McCarville says. “It’s not about making playoffs. It’s about winning this thing. The excitement — I can feel it right now in my belly.”