A local curling team begins throwing stones at the B.C. senior women’s curling championship in Kelowna today.
The Bedard rink comprised of skip Rhonda Lee Bedard of Grand Forks, third Rose Beauchamp of Trail, second Laurel Babcock of Trail and lead Anne Marie Byers of Grand Forks qualified in the Zone trials last month in Nelson and are opening with two games today at the Kelowna Curling Club.
“Our expectations are just to go and curl well and have fun and hopefully it all works out for us,” said Bedard.
The foursome formed just five months ago and competed in Trail’s Kootenay Savings Super League to hone their shot-making skills and build their team.
“When we started out, it was maybe a year or two year plan to build a team, but five months, six months into it and here we are.”
It is Bedard’s first trip to the provincial senior women’s championship but Beauchamp is a veteran of six B.C.’s and will throw skip stones, while Bedard calls the game.
The Bedard rink will have their work cut out for them the first day as they face the Karen Lepine rink of Langley followed by, Trail native Kathy Smiley’s rink from Royal City out of New Westminster.
Smiley is a perennial favourite in the provincials, having won four B.C. senior women’s championships in the last seven years and has reached the final game of the Canadian championships all four times.
But credentials like that don’t bother the Trail skip.
“Rose is very familiar with all the names and the players . . . but names don’t intimidate me, I’m a firm believer of if you go out and give it all you got, it could still be anybody’s game.”
The Marilyn Berry rink from Invermere also qualified from the Kootenay Zone playoff and will meet the Bedard foursome on Thursday.
Eight teams duel it out in a round-robin format, with the finals going on Sunday.