Curling team takes on McMaster invitational

With the new year came a fresh opportunity for the Marauders to showcase their curling prowess on home ice

To start the new year, the Marauders curling team hosted the first curling invitational of the year. The McMaster Invitational took place during the first weekend of January, bringing together fierce competition from multiple universities across Ontario.

The invitational competition served as an exciting opportunity for both the men’s and women’s curling teams to sharpen their skills and build momentum ahead of the Ontario University Athletics championships this year. “We had a great weekend going 4-1 with some pretty controlled wins.” said Ben Winchester, one of the co-presidents of McMaster’s curling team.

Over the two-day period for which the invitational took place, the men’s team faced the University of Toronto, Trent University and York University once each and Brock University twice. They ended the invitational with an admirable four wins and one loss, finishing third after a 5-1 win against Brock in the playoffs. The women’s team performed just as well, ending the invitational with four wins and one loss.

The team worked on many aspects of their game prior to the invitational on the weekend. Namely their pregame practices.

“Pregame practices are a major component of curling tournaments. They typically are not included in invitationals, however they were in the one over the weekend [McMaster Invitational]. They determine who has the last shot in the first dent which is a huge advantage. Also at the end of practice each team also throws a draw and the draw score is used for tie breaking purposes.” said Winchester. 

Their pregame practices turned out to be effective as the Marauders ended up having hammer in three of their matches.

Looking forward, Winchester expressed that the men’s team is hoping to work on being a more offense-oriented team. This shift aims to capitalize on scoring opportunities and to put more pressure on their opponents.

“We’re a more conservative and defensive team. We don’t typically have a lot of rocks in play which results in our wins being narrow for the most part. We’ve recently focused on upping our offense to score some big ends and we saw some glimpses of that in the invitational. Hopefully this is something that we can keep building on.” said Winchester.

As one of the more tenured members on the team in his fourth year, Winchester naturally has taken up more of a leadership role.

“It’s a little bit of pressure, but I love it. The most important thing is probably holding each other accountable on the ice.” said Winchester.

Last year, the Marauders didn’t have the best performance at the OUA's, having placed 12th.

“We weren’t expecting to do that well last year, however the 12th place finish was still a disappointment,” said Winchester.

Although the curling team has stayed the exact same, the men’s have been performing a lot better than they were during this time last year. This year they have a win percentage of 66.7 per cent compared to last year's of 23.3 per cent. “We’re playing a lot better this year and that's probably down to this group having more time to mesh together and understand each other,” said Winchester

Winchester is eyeing playoff success with the men’s team during his last year of his undergraduate career. However the Marauders will face a tough game against Laurier, who have won the OUA championship seven times in the last decade. “I’d really like to make the playoffs. And once you’re in, it's kind of just taking it game by game from there.” said Winchester.

After a successful invitational at home, the Marauders men's and women's curling teams will take on the Brock Invitational on Jan. 18 and 19 ahead of this year's OUA championships on the weekend of Feb 6, 2025.