Ally MacNutt, Maria Fitzgerald, Alison Umlah and Grace McCusker are your typical busy university students, taking courses, holding down part-time jobs and getting ready to take that next step in their lives.

And now, they have to juggle all that with the demands of representing Canada on the world stage in a sport our country typically expects big things from.

The quartet from the Halifax Curling Club captured the Nova Scotia under-21 women’s title in February in Truro, winning all five of its games. That earned the team the right to represent the province at the national competition in Fort McMurray, Alta., in March. The MacNutt rink continued its outstanding run by rattling off 10 consecutive victories en route to the Canadian title.

MacNutt and company now turn their attention to preparing for the 2025 world championship, which has yet to finalize a host venue, but Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy – site of the 2026 Olympic Winter Games – has been mentioned as a possible destination. 

In her own words, MacNutt, the skip of the team, talks about their success and how they are getting ready to wear Canada’s colours.

Forming the team:

Me and Alison played on a team together last year with Theresa (Breen, the team’s coach) as our coach. Grace is from Vancouver, but she moved here to go to Dalhousie and she curled with Maria last year, and we always played against each other. At the end of last season, our teams broke up because of school and other reasons, so we wound up coming together.”

Realizing their potential:

“Probably after our first tournament. We jelled so fast together and we became such great friends on and off the ice. That’s something really special on a curling team, because dynamics are so important. So we had a good base, and we just kept building off of that.”

Winning nationals:

“During the last end and the last shot, I was asking Maria, ‘If she misses this, does that mean we win?’ I was totally in shock. And then when the game was over and the crowd was cheering so loud, I didn’t even know what to feel. I think I was still in shock for another week after that.”

What’s next:

“We’ve already started planning for events for next season and we’ve met with some new coaches we have. We have a national coach now, and we’ve met with our new mental performance coach and we have a nutrition coach, so we meet with them throughout the summer. We’re also in the gym doing offseason training with a trainer and on our own.  We’ve been invited to the next-gen program, which is in Edmonton in August, so we’ll get on the ice earlier.”

Great expectations:

“It does bring a lot of pressure because Canada has done well at worlds the last few years, so we definitely want to keep that going. We haven’t set any solid goals yet, but we’ll talk about that soon. We just hope we can make everyone proud.”