The 100 Mile House blind curling team is competing in the Western Blind Curling Championships in Winnipeg from March 15 to 18.
This will mark the fifth time the team has competed at the Western championships.
“It would be great if we could win the tournament,” said skip Jim Vinson before the team left for the tournament. Vinson calls the shots and a sighted guide on the other end of the ice interprets for the curlers throwing the rocks.
While the team hasn’t cracked the top three in the past, they also haven’t come last. They’re hoping to do better than they’ve done in the past.
“We’ve got that much more experience than what we’ve had before,” says Vinson.
The team, made up of Vinson, Linda Peterson, Marilyn Vinson, Lori Fry and Vern Short (of Kamloops) qualified for the Western championships in January at the West Coast Blind Curling Association championships in Prince George, where they placed third.
The Western championships may prove challenging for the team, who, with the exception of their sighted guide, is entirely filled with players with visual impairments. Tournament rules allow each team to have a sighted player as well as a sighted guide.
While Vinson says that makes it a little harder to compete, he says the team has the ability to win.
100 Mile will compete against six other teams in the championship — two from each of the Western provinces with the exception of Manitoba, who is only sending one team. Round robin play will determine the winners, which means six games for the 100 Mile curlers.
Still, what Vinson says he is looking forward to most is the comfort and camaraderie between the different teams.
“Just getting together with everybody we’ve met over the years. It’s a nice group and of course, being visually impaired, being in a group of visually impaired people is really comfortable,” he says.
