Baseball pitchers have a perfect game. Golfers have a hole in one. Curling has the eight-ender … and last weekend, a Cochrane teen and her team pulled off that extremely rare play to set their sport abuzz.
“I never realized this was possible,” said skip Jessica Wytrychowski, a 16-year-old student at Cochrane High School. “I was so ecstatic.”
Curling Canada describes an eight-ender as a perfect score in one end of a curling game. Although there are more than 1,000 curling clubs in Canada and countless more players, the organization recognizes about a dozen eight-enders a year.
“You need eight misses from the other team,” said spokesman Al Cameron. “It is exceptionally rare.”
Wytrychowski and her team weren’t gunning for glory when they competed in the Alberta Junior Curling Tour’s U18 Bonspiel in Airdrie – they were just hoping to log a win in Saturday’s game against the Subasthika Thangadurai team. The match started as many others do, but things started to add up in the second end.
“We were just drawing everything in,” said Wytrychowski.
One by one, the red rocks remained in the house, while the blues came up short. As the end wrapped up, all eight of Wytrychowski’s team’s rocks rested in scoring range.
But Thangadurai’s team had the hammer.
“We were already sitting eight … The other team show the last rock,” recalled the skip. “But it ended up coming in just a little too tight – and took out their own rock.”
The juniors didn’t immediately realize the significance of what they had accomplished. Both social media and the crowd watching, however, sure did.
“Before we even got off the ice, we were on Facebook and Instagram and everything. There were so many people that I didn’t even know that were commenting on the picture,” said Wytrychowski with a smile.
“When we came off the ice, everyone was shaking our hands. (One of the coaches) said, ‘You’ve made a moment in history for me,’ because they’d never seen one before.”
Fresh off the extraordinary achievement, Wytrychowski’s team – currently ranked the number one U18 team in Alberta – will now prepare for the U21 Junior Southern Playdowns in Medicine Hat.
Wytrychowski said the thrill of the eight-ender will carry them through the rest of the season.
“I think that, just going back to it knowing what we can do, when we get down it’s going to be a good memory to bring us up.”
