{"id":15796,"date":"2018-04-12T09:00:12","date_gmt":"2018-04-12T16:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=15796"},"modified":"2018-05-10T15:22:21","modified_gmt":"2018-05-10T22:22:21","slug":"camosun-chargers-add-womens-curling-team-to-roster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2018\/04\/12\/camosun-chargers-add-womens-curling-team-to-roster\/","title":{"rendered":"Chargers bring curling to Camosun"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Camosun Chargers have added a women\u2019s curling team to their roster. The team formed after a group of Camosun student athletes talked to Melissa Soligo, who expressed interest in coaching the team. Soligo, an Olympic athlete, then approached Camosun recreation and athletics coordinator Graham Matthews to get the process of starting a curling team at the college underway.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said that we don\u2019t have a program right now because there\u2019s no PACWEST [Pacific Western Athletic Association] league,\u201d says Matthews.<\/p>\n

But Soligo had her visions set on bigger things for the Chargers. She told Matthews there was a group of students at the college who had done well in curling; Matthews says that, as long as they were all student athletes at the college who met the minimum grade requirements to play their sport, the college approved of getting a team started.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Camosun Chargers women’s curling team (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe pursued it,\u201d says Matthews. \u201cWe\u2019ll send [them] off and see what happens at the national championship.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happened was that the Chargers curling team\u2014made up of skip Taylor Reese-Hansen, third Jordan Koster, second Mariah Coulombe, and lead Sydney Brilz\u2014took home silver at the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association National Curling Championship\u2014held in Leduc, Alberta from March 24 to 28\u2014but not without some unexpected obstacles along the way, as Koster broke her foot two weeks before the event.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe actually played the entire national championship shorthanded. We played with three players the entire week,\u201d says Soligo.<\/p>\n

Soligo made some quick coaching adjustments to accommodate and says the team played with resilience.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to change our systems a little bit,\u201d she says. \u201cNormally, everyone sort of has one or a couple of jobs, so what we did is we employed our person who was either throwing or holding the broom in the house to come out and help sweep so that we had two sweepers when we could. We had to change the way we threw the rock.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reese-Hansen\u2014who was named a tournament all-star at the event\u2014says the team wasn\u2019t going to let injuries affect the outcome.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t really know what to expect going into it,\u201d she says. \u201cJust because we\u2019ve never had to play with just three players. It was an experience. But we weren\u2019t going to let that affect our results.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soligo says the team more than exceeded their goal of going to the nationals; she adds that it\u2019s now her job to keep the athletes calm and focused.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing in those high-calibre events, you sort of have to guide the athletes and keep them focused on the plan,\u201d she says. \u201cAs an athlete, you get pretty hyper and the adrenaline starts flowing when you\u2019re out there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Camosun Chargers have added a women\u2019s curling team to their roster. The team formed after a group of Camosun student athletes talked to Melissa Soligo, who expressed interest in coaching the team. Soligo, an Olympic athlete, then approached Camosun recreation and athletics coordinator Graham Matthews to get the process of starting a curling team […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15796"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15892,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15796\/revisions\/15892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}