BROOMFIELD — Considering that she is competing this week in the U.S. Olympic Curling Trials, three-time national champion Amy Wright might feel a bit uncomfortable talking about how much she enjoyed a recent 3 1/2-year hiatus from the sport.
With her husband, Tim, they operated and then sold a Wisconsin resort house the couple had built from the ground up. They made plans to get into the restaurant business in their hometown of Duluth, Minn. And the entire family could spend time together curling at the club level, where competition takes a back seat to camaraderie.
“Some things run their course, and I thought (competitive curling) had run its course for me,” recalled Wright, 45, who is competing in her fourth Olympic Trials, at Broomfield Event Center. “I didn’t have the right team or the right desire. I thought that was it.”
Then, last summer, the phone rang. Courtney George, a member of the 2006 U.S. Olympic Team at age 19, was looking to form a team that could make a run at a spot in the 2010 Vancouver Games.
So, Amy, should we go for it?
“I’ve known Courtney since she was in the womb,” Wright said Thursday. “I knew she was a talented player, somebody I always wanted to play with. So we started talking.”
A few phone calls later, Team Wright was formed. Wright is the skip (captain) and George the vice skip. Completing Team Wright are Jordan Moulton, 22, and Patti Luke, 42. There’s a nice blend of experience and youthful exuberance.
Deftly curling the stone around a guard (blocking stone) that protected the front of the house (scoring ring), Wright scored the pivotal points in a 9-5 victory Thursday over Team Lank to secure the No. 2 seed for the playoffs.
“Amy is just a great shooter,” said George, whose father coached Wright before Courtney was born.
Wright’s competitive juices are flowing again. And maybe, just maybe, she will finally get to the Olympics. In 1998, Wright competed on a team that missed winning the Olympic Trails by less than an inch. In the pivotal end (inning) of the playoff game, her team needed only to move the opponent’s stone one inch to knock it out of the house. It moved a quarter-inch.
“It’s not unusual for a quarter-inch to be the margin of error in this sport,” Wright said.
The veteran curler paused when asked if making the Olympic Team has always been her dream. Not always, she said.
“I was one of the advocates in the beginning for making curling an Olympic sport (for the 1988 Calgary Games),” she said. “Then I wasn’t sure it was a good thing. I was seeing some of the things I love about curling go away, some of the camaraderie, the sitting with teams after a game, the handshakes. The higher the stakes . . .”
Wright said she has come full circle.
“I’m back to thinking (the exposure from) the Olympics is good for curling,” Wright said. “We would like to all go back to the days when we all could be friendly after a game. The comments — ‘Good shot’ — you don’t hear that as much. I’d like to have those days back, but I think those are bygone days.”
Tom Kensler: 303-954-1280 or tkensler@denverpost.com
