Ireland Ladies Curling Team

First of all, thanks very much for visiting our page – we really appreciate all the support!

Irish Curling

We are all proud members of the Irish Curling Association and regularly take part in competitions to represent the country. The ICA is a small Association of around 60 curlers, however we have teams competing at both European and World Championship level every season. Representing Ireland has been a huge honour for all of us and we hope to continue doing this in the coming years however it is becoming increasingly difficult to compete against other fully-funded teams and countries.

To add to this, we’re all pretty spread out geographically – Ailsa (Aberdeen), Clare (Glasgow), Jen (Edinburgh), Hazel (Malaga) and Katie (Los Angeles) so just getting the team together for a week of training is a massive financial undertaking.

Our Mission

In April this year we will be competing in our third European Curling Championships in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In 2015 we did really well and won a bronze medal so this year we would love to go at least one better and bring home gold or silver, securing our place at the European B League Championships, set to take place in Glasgow in November 2016.

The European C Curling Championships take place between 25 April to 1 May 2016 and we hope to raise as much as we can in order to get all five team members and our coach, Martin Sutherland, to Slovenia. Martin gives up a huge amount of his time to coach and support us and we really want to have him there with us at the tournament.

Funding

We are in an unfortunate position with regards to funding due to the fact we are a minority sport. To add to this, there aren’t actually any curling rink facilities anywhere in Ireland (we are supporting an ongoing campaign to have a rink built) so we play our games and do all of our team training in Scotland. We are therefore not eligible for financial support from any of the governing bodies in Ireland, however this doesn’t stop us from being 100% committed to improving and doing Ireland proud!!

It does mean that we must cover the costs of competing (and all other associated spend such as training, travel, accommodation, kit and equipment) from our own pockets which is a massive challenge for us.

Support

We would be hugely appreciative of any financial support that you are able to give in order to help us to achieve our goal. If you have any queries or would like further information on our team please dont hesitate to contact us, either by leaving a comment on this page or sending an email to [email protected]

Thanks very much – we look forward to keeping you updated on our progress!!

Ailsa, Katie, Clare, Hazel and Jen

(Photographs (c) Jayne Stirling Photography / Celine Stucki / WCF)