July 29, 2008

Squad announced for European Youth Olympics

The Royal Caledonian Curling Club and British Curling have announced the squad that has been selected to represent Great Britain at the European Youth Olympic Festival in Slask Beskidy, Poland, February 14-21, 2009. See the previous post about the event here.

In alphabetical order, the curlers are Hannah Fleming, Lauren Gray, Rebecca Kesley, Anna Sloan, and Alice Spence. To be eligible, all were born between July 1, 1990, and June 30, 1992. Olympic gold medallist Debbie Knox will be the coach.

A GB boys' team is first reserve for the event at present, and names have not been announced.

The official announcement is here, with quote from British Curling's Chris Hildrey.

A Curling Today reader posted this link to a photo album where you can see photos from the Polish Junior Nationals at the rink in Bielsko-Biala where the EYOF curling will take place.

Here are some pics of those selected for this strong GB squad.

Anna Sloan skipped her team to the Scottish Junior Championship final last season, although will team up with Eve Muirhead for next season's Junior Championships.

Lauren Gray was Anna's longtime third player, and next season will be playing with Claire Hamilton.

Hannah Flemming has skipped her own team for a number of seasons.

Alice Spence has played second for Hannah for several years.

This pic is of Rebecca Kesley practising at Summer Camp last year. Rebecca skipped her own team in the Scottish Junior Finals last season. But she has also teamed up with Hannah, and played with Thomas Sloan and Blair Fraser as a mixed team in the U-17 Slam. They won the first event at Perth (see here).

And I just had to use this photo of Debbie Knox doing an ET impression, when coaching the Claire Hamilton team last season!

Anna's pic is by Richard Gray, the others by Bob.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

will a men's team get picked even though they are first reserves?

Bob Cowan said...

The junior men who applied have been advised by Rhona Martin, the Performance Development Coach, that their applications are on file and will be considered should circumstances change.

I assume from this that Rhona has in mind who might get the call if indeed this proves necessary.