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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Feb. 19, 2005
Youngest team in field
gets big win at 2006 U.S. Olympic Team Trials for
Curling
(MADISON, Wis.) – The Aileen Sormunen rink may be the
youngest team in the field but they played like veterans
in the opening draw of the 2006 U.S. Olympic Team Trials
for Curling Saturday night at the Madison Curling Club.
Sormunen and her Duluth, Minn., teammates Courtney
George, Amanda Jensen and Amanda McLean jumped out on
Caitlin Maroldo’s New York rink right out of the gates
scoring two in the first end. The team was then able to
cash in on a few missed shots by the Maroldo team to
steal a point in each of the next two ends.
Maroldo (Rochester, N.Y.) and teammates Chrissy Fink-Hasse
(Schenectady, N.Y.), Elizabeth Williams (Utica, N.Y.)
and Erlene Puleo (New Hartford, N.Y.) got on the board
in the fifth with one point and were counting two rocks
in the sixth end before Sormunen made a hit to score one
and increase her team’s lead to 5-1.
“That really helped because they would have been back in
it,” Sormunen said.
Sormunen, who just turned 18 last week, played well
beyond her years in dismantling the veteran Maroldo rink
in every end from there on out. The team just recently
competed in the 2005 Junior National Championships
before packing their bags for their first U.S. women’s
national event, which also happens to be the event to
choose the USA’s entrants for the 2006 Olympic Winter
Games in Torino, Italy.
“We are very excited to be here. We’ve played all of
these teams before so we’re more excited than nervous,”
Sormunen said. “We all played great. Everyone was on and
in tune with each other.”
The defending national champion Patti Lank rink opened
up the competition with an 8-6 win over Nancy Richard’s
Seattle-based team. Lank scored two points each time the
team had the last rock advantage to hold a slight lead
throughout. However, the Richard rink made things
interesting in the in the ninth end scoring two to close
the gap at 7-6. Lank and teammates Erika Brown
(Oakville, Ontario/Madison, Wis.), Nicole Joraanstad
(Madison) and Natalie Nicholson (Bemidji, Minn.) simply
ran Richard out of rocks in the final end to secure the
win.
2003 national and world champion Debbie McCormick rink
also started the competition with a close win over
Madison’s Lori Karst team, 7-5.
“We’re expecting a lot of our games to be close. There
are a lot of good teams here,” said McCormick (Rio,
Wis.). “I think we’re going to have a lot of games like
that.”
McCormick and teammates Allison Pottinger (Eden Prairie,
Minn.), Ann Swisshelm Silver (Chicago) and Tracy
Sachtjen (Lodi, Wis.) went out aggressive scoring two
with the hammer and didn’t let up. In the second end,
Karst showed why she’s in the Olympic Trials field when
she made a soft hit and stay to score one with McCormick
sitting six showing she can handle the high-pressure
shots.
“Anytime we had the hammer and had the chance for a
corner guard, we took it. Lori Karst played great,”
McCormick said. “She put a lot of pressure on us.”
The teams traded deuces in the third and fourth ends and
kept the game close throughout with McCormick scoring
one in the sixth and stealing one in the seventh and
Karst duplicating that feat in the eighth and ninth
ends.
In the 10th, Karst completed a perfect draw
partially behind a guard for shot rock in the 10th
with her team’s last rock. McCormick’s last rock (last
of the game) was equally perfect, just rubbing off of
Karst’s to get first count and the winning point.
Three-time national champion Amy Wright (Duluth, Minn.)
led her team to a 6-5 victory over Katlyn Schmitt’s
Bemidji rink.
The two teams battled throughout the match trading
shots. However, the final rock didn’t matter much as
Wright didn’t leave Schmitt much to work with. With
Wright counting two rocks, Schmitt’s first shot came up
a bit short in the rings allowing Wright to place
another of her team’s rocks into the rings and also not
leaving Schmitt, a three-time junior national champion,
with much to look at shot-wise. Schmitt simply drew the
four-foot to score one for her team and close the
deficit to a one-point loss.
Bemidji’s Cassie Johnson rink joined the list of teams
with 1-0 records with an 8-4 win over the Norma O’Leary
team. Johnson and teammates Jamie Johnson (Bemidji),
Jessica Schultz (Duluth, Minn.) and Maureen Brunt
(Portage, Wis.) patiently waited to get the start they
wanted blanking the first end and then getting three
points in the second. That start allowed the team to
play with a little more confidence, Johnson said.
“After scoring the three we just wanted to keep the
lead,” Johnson said. “We really hadn’t missed many shots
up to that and I didn’t think we would miss much more.
It’s a good confidence builder for us to win our first
game.”
The women will be back in action at 10 a.m. tomorrow.
The men’s first draw gets underway at 8 tonight. Live
action of the 2006 U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Curling
can be followed on the USA Curling web site at
www.usacurl.org.
Biographical information and photos of the qualified
teams can be found at
www.usacurl.org. Media accreditation forms for the
2006 U.S. Olympic Team Trials also can be found on the
web at
http://www.usacurl.org/media-acf04.htm.
USA Curling is sponsored by AIT Worldwide Logistics and
AmerAust Technologies as well as by General Motors,
Chevron-Texaco and Bank of America through a joint
marketing program with the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Game scores: McCormick 7, Karst 5; Sormunen 8,
Maroldo 1; Wright 6, Schmitt 5; Lank 8, Richard 6;
Johnson 8, O’Leary 4
Women’s standings
Johnson 1-0
Lank 1-0
McCormick 1-0
Sormunen 1-0
Wright 1-0
Karst 0-1
Maroldo 0-1
O’Leary 0-1
Richard 0-1
Schmitt 0-1
(30)
For more information: Rick Patzke,
USA Curling,
rickp@curlingrocks.net, 715-344-1199
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