Team O’Bryan is a group of driven and talented curlers ages 15 to 17 from Prince George and Williams Lake.
They have been pushing and training as hard as ever this year, and it looks like their hard work has paid off.
The team will be headed to Kimberly for the Safetek Profire U18 Provincial Curling Championships. There they will face 12 teams in front of hundreds of spectators from Dec. 19-23.
“They are excited and nervous all at once,” said head coach Wendee Copeland. “We've trained harder this year and we have a sports psychologist who has worked with them. We have myself and another coach who is doing the practices. So it's a bit more of a bigger deal this year to them. They want to do well and they want to win, and they have what it takes.”
The team's members are no strangers to competition, either. They have proved their mettle in the past few years, attending the BC Winter Games twice. They are now ready to win themselves a national spot at the championships.
New skip Liam O’Bryan has been working tirelessly with strategic coach Chris Moir and the sports psychologist Ann Homes to learn new strategies and remain even-keeled and on task, even during the heat of competition all while only being 16.
Copeland also stated that they couldn’t have gotten this far without the local community and all their help. Sponsors include Frontline Inspections, Connect Mechanical, Co-op Four Rivers, IQ Builders, Pop-A-Zone Trucking, Jepsen petroleum, Environmental Dynamic and All West Glass.
Copeland also wanted to credit a few key players who she said helped ensure this year's success.
“Thanks to Ann Holmes, who spent a lot of hours working with them the last few months, and the curlers at the rink in Prince George and in Williams Lake, they have supported us throughout financially with 50-50 draws and we've had broom raffles," she said. "There is just so much excitement to support the youth. It's been exciting for the curlers to be involved because it's been a while since there's been some competition curlers coming out of Prince George. So the local community is pretty happy.”
