KAWARTHA LAKES-Jessica Humphries has been curling since she was five years old, starting out at the Bobcaygeon Curling Club.
15 years later she was standing on the podium at the Canadian Junior Championships in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan accepting a silver medal with the BC team. “The girls have become my best friends so it was great the way it worked out, I’ve loved playing with them so the experience of playing in the national final with them was pretty special.”
The girls are teammates, Skip-Sarah Daniels , Third- Kayla MacMillan, Lead- Sarah Loken
and Coach- Katie Witt. The team just came together last September and put in a lot of work to reach the podium.
“We’ve put in a ridiculous amount of hours, practicing together three times as week at least.” said Humphries. “We have four athletes with some talent but we have put in a lot of work playing most weekends, we’ve played in events in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and around BC, even starting last summer we had a training weekend in Manitoba. We are also in the gym alot, often before our practices.”
She also credits coach Katie Witt with pushing them to be their best.
Going into the final game on January 27th, Team Daniels was looking for a win. Although the colour of the medal isn’t quite what they had hoped for Humphries says she is proud of the team and the friendships they’ve forged.
“When we’re not curling we are often just hanging out as a team and we really enjoy each others company, we bascially win as a team and lose as a team I think that’s a big part of our success.” The Alberta team won gold.
The team went social media silent during the competition and Humphries thinks that helped them stay focused. “We work with a sports psychologist out of Ottawa and that was one of his suggestions to turn social media off because its such an energy drainer, so we could be fully focused on curling.”
The move was also an attempt to block out how many people were following and watching. Â “Now getting texts and messages from all those who were watching, it was pretty special to know how many people from back home were supporting us.”
This is Humphries second run at the Canadian Junior Championships, playing for Ontario in 2016 and finishing 7th. She has some advice for anyone working to reach their goals.
“Work hard, basically find your passion and keep working. It takes a lot of work but once you get there its pretty amazing.”
For now its back to homework and Brock University to finish her undergrad. This was Humphries last year as a juniour but she is hoping the Women’s National Team will be next!
