By Ben Hoppe, U.S. curling writer
While the victors of last month’s U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Sioux Falls, S.D., celebrated, the Olympic Qualifying Event in Kelowna, B.C., loomed large for the teams skipped by Tabitha Peterson and Danny Casper.
Immediately after their wins, both teams acknowledged the work that still had to be done.
“We know Kelowna is not going to be easy,” said Team Peterson third Cory Thiesse. “But we feel prepared and ready to bring the rest.”
Team Casper’s vice skip Luc Violette shared a similar sentiment a few days after their win had sunk in.
“Winning trials is what we all dream of, but of course this is just part one," Violette said. "We had our celebration, but all business now for Kelowna.”
For sisters Tabitha and Tara Peterson, a top-two finish in Kelowna means they can return to the Olympics to try and improve on their four-win performance in 2022. For everyone else, though, a first Olympic berth in four-person curling is at stake at the Olympic Qualification Event.
THE POST-TRIALS TRANSITION
Once the trials wrapped up, the teams got right back to work with just under a month to prepare for the OQE. Routines were generally kept the same in the weeks following the event. After the teams celebrated Thanksgiving with their families, they made the trek to Eveleth, Minn., for a national team training camp.
USA Curling sent their head ice technician to Curl Mesabi in Eveleth to try to mimic the conditions the team will experience at the Kelowna Curling Club for the event. Korey Dropkin also attended the training camp, joining his Olympic mixed doubles partner, Thiesse, to talk through team systems and tactics.
They had some other support in Eveleth, as well.
“Kids at local schools also made a bunch of posters for us, which was a very nice touch,” shared Violette. “A great environment for us to prepare.”
But the preparation for the Olympic Qualification Event did not just start in these last few weeks. Even before these teams had won the right to be Team USA, they were setting themselves up for this week in British Columbia.
Team Peterson started off the season with a win at the Euro Super Series with a field containing three Olympic-qualified teams. After a quarterfinal finish at the AMJ Masters Tier 2, they went on to play in the Pan Continental Curling Championships in Virginia, Minn., in October. That event gave them a taste of a similar schedule to the OQE, playing 10-end games in an eight-team round-robin format.
At that same event, Casper served as the alternate for Team Shuster, who have been huge supporters of the Casper rink since their three-game battle in Sioux Falls. Casper said that week with Shuster confirmed that his rink was doing a lot of things right already, and he knows they’re in his corner when he is in Kelowna if the team needs anything.
“We can’t be more thankful for that from them," Casper said.
Team Casper’s challenging, event-heavy schedule should help them navigate the round-robin in Kelowna. They’ve played eight events this season and finished in the top three in all but one of those. In addition to their win at the Olympic Trials, the team won the AMJ Masters Tier 2 and also defeated Joel Retornaz in Sault Ste Marie, Ont., while their skip was at the Pan Continental Curling Championships.
With all of the work they have put in up until this point, Casper said there was no sense in changing their preparation routines leading up to the OQE.
“A lot of people think that at big events like these, you need to do more or try harder, or get some extra secret for how to win these," Casper said. "The only ‘secret’ in my opinion is understanding and accepting that there isn’t one and you are right where you need to be."
BOTH TEAMS IN STRONG POSITION TO CONTEND
Two Olympic spots are up for grabs in each discipline at the event. The top three teams in the standings after the round-robin move onto the playoffs. The top two teams will face off, with the winner earning the first spot in Italy. The losing team plays the third-ranked team from round-robin play for the 10th and final spot in the Olympic field.
Both teams should figure to be in the hunt for a playoff spot, but they’ll need to get off to a strong start against tough opponents in their opening games.
Peterson will take the ice first in a game against Japan’s Sayaka Yoshimura on Friday night. They have played one game against an OQE opponent so far this year, a win against Australia’s Helen Williams. They squared up with three of the teams at last year’s World Women's Curling Championships to wrap up a difficult season, where they got a win against Yoshimura but lost to Norway’s Marianne Roervik and Dilsat Yildiz of Türkiye.
Peterson enters the event at No. 19 on the world rankings. They’re the second-highest team in the event, trailing only the 10th-ranked Yoshimura. The rankings don’t tell the whole story, however, with the European teams fresh off of good showings at the European Curling Championships.
For Casper, they enter as the eight-ranked team in the world, the best of any team at the OQE, thanks to their strong season thus far. They have not played any of the teams in the men’s field yet this year, but they did last season. In 2024-25, Casper notched a win against Wouter Gosgens of the Netherlands and dropped two games to Xu Xiaoming of China. Their first game is on Saturday morning, also against Japan.
Both teams will need to bring their best, with qualification for the Winter Olympics having a major impact on the growth of the game in the United States.
The pressure is on, but these are two teams that have prepared for this moment well before this year. The stress of qualifying for the Olympics is no stranger to Peterson, but for all of Team Casper, this is the first time they’ll play in an event with Olympic qualification on the line. It will be a new pressure for them, but their skip knows what they’re capable of.
“The trials was also a pressure we’d never felt before, and we brought our best when it mattered,” said Casper. “There’s no reason we can’t do that again."
