Team McCormick takes men's playoffs lead at U.S. Olympic curling trials

OMAHA – Following a too-short night with too little sleep, Heath McCormick refused to complain. A loss Wednesday night cost his team a chance to wrap up a playoff spot at the U.S. Olympic team trials for curling, but it had another shot Thursday — only 10 hours after a mentally taxing defeat.

"We put two years of our lives into this, so we weren't going to let [Wednesday's loss] bother us for too long," he said. "We just refocused."

After Team McCormick dispatched Team Birr in a tiebreaker Thursday morning, it faced another quick turnaround at Baxter Arena. It finished the day 2-for-2, beating John Shuster 5-3 in the playoff opener Thursday night. McCormick, who missed two critical shots in the round-robin finale, guided his team with a sure hand in both games to get to the playoff round and take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-three series.

In the first game of the women's playoffs, Nina Roth outlasted Jamie Sinclair 6-5 in an extra end. The trials continue Friday, with the playoff winners earning berths in the Olympics this February in South Korea.

Shuster, the three-time Olympian and top seed, struggled with the ice for much of the playoff opener. He shot 71 percent for the match, and the Chisholm native's team — which includes Tyler George, John Landsteiner and Joe Polo of Duluth, plus Matt Hamilton of Wisconsin — never led. McCormick shot 91 percent.

"We kind of got behind the eight-ball," Shuster said. "Every now and then, you run into a skip that just makes everything. We've got to do a little better job applying pressure in the next game."

After the loss to Team Birr on Wednesday night, McCormick and his teammates — Chris Plys and Korey Dropkin of Duluth, and Tom Howell of Milwaukee — had to win a rematch at 8:30 a.m. Thursday to move on to the playoffs. Plys said he barely slept, but the team remained confident.

While McCormick and his team couldn't sleep, Sinclair couldn't eat. The constant focus that curling demands, and the prize at stake in the week-long tournament, made her team so nervous that its appetite was spoiled.

The Blaine-based skip predicted the first playoff game would go to the team that was best able to control that anxiety. In an exceptionally tight match, Roth took advantage of a Sinclair mistake to score two in the ninth end, giving her a 5-4 lead. Sinclair managed only one point in the 10th, leaving the match tied 5-5; her team struggled with accuracy again in the 11th, and Roth scored the winner on a takeout.

"We were trying not to think about the big picture," said Roth, skipping in the Olympic trials for the first time. "There were definitely points like the 10th end where we felt the pressure. You could hear our adrenaline in our voices. Just playing through that excitement was key."

For Todd Birr's team, just forcing the tiebreaker with McCormick proved a point. It was initially left out of the trials field, as the six-person selection committee chose only teams that are part of USA Curling's high performance program.

With the help of an attorney, Team Birr successfully argued that its body of work merited inclusion in the field.

Friday, it will be McCormick's turn to make a statement. Shuster said his team has "rattled off plenty of wins with our backs against the wall," giving him faith it can force a third game Saturday.

Though McCormick will have the opportunity to get more sleep before Game 2, it wasn't guaranteed.

"If you're not nervous, you're not living," he said. "We've been thinking about [the Olympics] for two years. But we've worked really hard on trying to stay in the moment."