Sudbury curler headed to provincials in New Liskeard

Jen Gates is pretty excited about the national curling championship that Sudbury is hosting this spring.

The U18 curling championships are coming to the Idylwylde Golf & Country Club in April.

Gates is the curling and communications manager at the Idylwylde. She says it's the biggest national championship that Curling Canada hosts with 28 teams and roughly 112 athletes.

"We need a lot of manpower, we need a lot of support from the community in the way of volunteers," said Gates. Over the six days volunteers are needed in ticket sales, statistics, timing, security and a lot of different areas.

Gates said it's an expensive event to put on and the event is also looking for local sponsorship.

Gates herself is curling in a provincial championship next week in New Liskeard. She's curling with Krista McCarville out of Thunder Bay.

Gates is the fifth but she says she's been seeing a lot more ice time than most fifths due to several pregnancies among her teammates.

She was asked to come on the team in March 2018 in the event that someone on the team would be pregnant. And that's exactly what's happened. 

Gates said that women can certainly curl when they're pregnant but "there does become a point where it can be a little bit too much of a risk. It's less the throwing and more the sweeping that can be really scary to see a very pregnant woman sweeping." 

Gates was asked to join the McCarville team at the start of the season." So we've had our three cash spiels and then our provincials," she said.

Gates said the team is feeling pretty good about the upcoming championship in New Liskeard. 

"We get really intense around this time. All of us are really itching to get there and just get started," she said.