Squad to be selected for University Games

I missed this announcement recently, but I see that Cate Brewster has been appointed by British Curling to be national coach for the Great Britain team for the Winter Universiade Games in Harbin, China, in February 2009. Cate Brewster is the Assistant High Performance Curling Coach at the Scottish Institute of Sport.

To be eligible to play in the University Winter games, curlers must be students and under the age of 28. If they are involved, because of the clash of dates, they will not be able to play either the Scottish Junior Championships or the Gold League.

According to the press release, Cate is sure there is a pool of eligible players in Scotland. She's planning an off ice training camp this summer and an on ice camp at the start of the next season. The selected teams will compete in an international tournament to give them match practice.

The official website for the 2009 games is here.

The last University Winter games were held in Pinerolo, Italy, in 2007. To find the GB representatives then, five men's teams and two women's teams played off at Curl Aberdeen. Sarah Reid, Vicky Sloan, Sarah Macintyre and Laura Kirkpatrick won the women's place. John Hamilton, Andrew Craigie, Iain Chalmers and Graeme Copland won through to go to Italy and with Ross Paterson as fifth won the silver medals.

British Curling was incorporated in June 2006 and 'is responsible for the preparation, selection and performance of the British teams for events which require the entry of a British team.'

Here's a pic of Cate working with students at the successful RCCC Masterclass at Kinross at the end of 2007. Photo by Bob.