Ontario curlers a team off the ice too
By Paddy Moore
for CBC Sports Online

Curling is big in the small town of Russell, Ont., and Ryrie Brisco, like most people there, has been raised on the game.

"I love the intensity," says Brisco. "Games last for two and a half hours, and you have to be in the game the whole time. Every single rock counts. There's not one that's useless.

Flanked by her teammates, who are fast friends outside the rink, Ryrie Brisco delivers a rock

"And it's all strategy. You have to have some intellect to play the game because it's all about what's going to happen after you make the perfect shot and then after your opponent makes their perfect shot."

It might be understatement to say that the Ontario junior women's curling team is thrilled to be going to the Canada Winter Games.

"Oh my God, it's the most exciting thing in the whole world!" gushes Brisco, the team's 17-year-old lead, who lives about 30 minutes southeast of Ottawa.

"It is just so exciting to know that we're the four best in our age group right now in Ontario."

It's quite an achievement, considering Brisco, along with second Candace Johnson, third Lauren Mann and skip Laura Payne met each other at a curling "orphan clinic."

"We hooked up and started to play together, and lost a lot at first. I mean, a lot. We lost every game for the first few months," said Brisco.

After a while they started coming together as a team and winning. But Brisco found more than just a team -- she also found three new friends.

"Oh God, we do everything together," Brisco says. "Candace and I will go out dancing together, and Laura and I go shopping together all the time and it's great. It's like it's no longer just a curling team and we're all really close friends."

The team has trained hard for the Games over the past year. And while dedication and teamwork are key ingredients to the team's success, Brisco says it's not everything.

Without certain key rituals their game can fall apart.

"When we get on a winning streak, I won't change my clothes," Brisco says. "I'll style my hair the same and I'll wear the same black eyeliner, if that's what I had on the day before. And I always have to have Pat [skip Laura's mother] braid my hair.

"If my hair's not braided I tend to freak out a little bit ... and lose all my focus and then it kind of goes downhill from there."

Then there's the lucky charm.

According to teammate Candace Johnson, Brisco curls better when she has popular curler John Epping in her pocket.

"If John Epping is on the ice beside us she curls 90 per cent, or above, because we think she's trying to impress him. But if he's not beside us she sometimes doesn't do as well," says Johnson.

So after a time, Brisco asked Epping to bring a doll of himself. Epping brought a pipe-cleaner doll with his picture taped to it.

That doll now spends every tournament in Brisco's pocket, where it will definitely be during the Canada Winter Games.