By Ben Hoppe, U.S. curling writer
The women of USA Curling shone bright on the biggest stage at the Olympic Winter Games this past month. Cory Thiesse etched her name in history as the first U.S. woman to win a medal in curling. Team Peterson was just the second women’s team from the United States to make the playoffs, and the first in 24 years.
These women helped kick off what could be the biggest boom to curling since John Shuster’s team won gold at PyeongChang 2018. While they are undoubtedly blazing trails for future curlers with Olympic aspirations, their success has already been a boon for fellow national competitors who are taking the ice at the USA Curling national championships in Charlotte, N.C., this week.
Because of the national event’s proximity to the Winter Olympics, Team Peterson will not be there. Peterson’s trip to the Winter Olympics and the success of Allory Johnson, who is competing at the World Junior Curling Championships in Denmark this week, created opportunities for additional women’s teams, including some younger curlers, to play on the biggest national stage in the United States.
But as with so many sports, women and girls in the United States often face a steeper hill to climb than their male counterparts on the pebbled ice. The evidence is clear just by looking at the field in the national championships.
The lowest-ranked men’s team of the nationals field earned points in five events before January, while the lowest-ranked women’s team earned points in just two events over the same time span. The player pool is smaller, access to events is more difficult, and, as a result, the depth between the men’s and women’s programs in the country indicates a clear discrepancy.
“It’s pretty blatant,” said Madison Bear, skip of Team Strouse, in an interview last month. “I think people recognize the sides look very different on the men’s compared to the women’s right now, and there’s been a lot of questions as to why.”
One factor is pretty straightforward: money. While this is an issue for men’s teams as well, tour events in the United States are even rarer for women than for men. The 2025-26 season had just one women’s event eligible for points. As a result, women’s teams have to travel to Canada or elsewhere to earn points on tour, greatly limiting their ability to attend multiple events.
“When you’re in the U.S., you’re constantly travelling to different countries. A lot of times, we’re finding sponsors to help support us for any of this. The funding is — it’s just really difficult,” Bear said.
The strong showing by all United States teams, especially Team Peterson, will hopefully help increase program support for national teams, but that’s not the end-all, be-all. Increased access to funding may help curb the departure of young women from the competitive landscape who decide to pursue a degree or begin a career, but there is an even bigger factor for many women which can dictate when they step away.
“You’ve got a bit of a different timeline with women because we have to fit in potentially building another human person,” said Jordan Moulton, coach of Danny Casper’s Olympic team.
Not only do women have to consider when, in their adult lives, they want to start a family, but Clare Moores, a mixed doubles curler and coach for the United States National Wheelchair Team, noted that women may have to consider a more specific schedule.
"Women who want to have kids have to be in the position of, ‘Well, I have to time it out. Is that going to be nationals?'" Moores said.
Tabitha Peterson experienced it firsthand, having missed a significant portion of the 2024-25 season while she was pregnant with her daughter, Noelle.
“We kind of delayed having babies as long as possible, really, because we knew it was going to be harder to curl and do everything with having the baby," Peterson said.
While having children and continuing to curl has become more common for curlers in Canada, it’s a rarity south of the border. Bear hopes the moms who just travelled to Cortina can be a resource for U.S. women to continue curling after starting a family.
“The Petersons are some of the first people that I’ve grown up with or known that have now had kids and are continuing the game, and I’m just blown away,” Bear said. “They’re the first people that I’m hoping will share their experience and knowledge with me if that point ever comes.”
The most common thread among all of the women I spoke with, however, was not money or parenthood; it was coaching. The United States has a very small pool of women coaches, and the lack of coaching resources has been the biggest bottleneck to developing the women’s game in the country, while the men’s side has seen its depth continue to grow.
Bear noted how the needs for a women’s team may vary from those of a men’s team.
“Coaching, technique, all of these different things, it’s so different," Bear said. "The female body is so different. Our style of play and our game tend to be very different. So I think in the U.S., we are just kind of lacking resources.”
Moulton pointed back to the life circumstances that limit the availability of those women who could be good coaches.
“A lot of times, we want somebody who’s had the experience and played the game. And a lot of times, the women who have retired from playing have retired so they can concentrate on the other stuff that they gave up. It’s that life factor times two," Moulton said.
The most prominent female coach from the United States outside of Moulton is two-time Olympian and 2003 world champion Ann Swisshelm. While Swisshelm currently works with junior men’s team Caden Hebert, she was also a coach for Moores and demonstrated the impact that a coach at the pinnacle of the sport can have.
“Just hearing her experiences and her support of not only your team but the competitors. She is just like a fiercely supportive human. We just don’t have enough of those Ann Swisshelms around," Moores said.
But as present-day curlers decide to move from playing to coaching, Moores hopes the current generation of curlers can become the coaches the program is currently missing.
“We’re the ones making history. Hopefully, in a generation or two, we can still be there to foster the love for younger women," Moores said.
Those history-makers have been hard at work in recent weeks, and regardless of how or if they continue to give back to the game in future years, the impact of the history-makers at Milano Cortina 2026 will be fun to see take root in the near future. I am excited to see how Taylor Anderson-Heide’s pursuit of knowledge from everyone around her will encourage a new crop of front-enders who own their role. Perhaps more young girls saw Tara Peterson embracing the crowd’s energy and wanted to live that moment themselves. Still, others will hopefully be inspired by Thiesse’s silver medal in mixed doubles with Korey Dropkin, resulting in a new generation of ice-cold shotmakers from across the country.
“I know how important it was for me to have girls to look up to when I was growing up,” Thiesse said in Cortina. “Not only in my own sports, but other sports out there, winning medals and seeing that on TV and dreaming big because of it.”
They’ve inspired the dreams of many. Now it’s the job of everyone in the United States curling community to nurture the dreams of young girls with funding, access, coaching, and support so they can be realized.
