Grandy 3-0 at Stu Sells Halifax

Vancouver's Clancy Grandy (photo: Michael Burns, Curling Canada) and team decided to go all-in on their athletic pursuits and become full-time curlers. They're starting to see results from their efforts. Since first teaming up together last season, the squad has cracked the top 20 in the world rankings, appeared at the national women's championship, the Grand Slam of Curling series and PointsBet Invitational. Grandy is off to a strong 3-0 start at the Stu Sells 1824 Halifax Classic and entered weekend play as a Pool C co-leader with Seungyoun Ha of South Korea. "We really wanted to model ourselves as a team after other professional sports teams," Grandy said. "That meant dedicating full-time attention to the sport. So both off-ice training, on-ice training, game tape, and just the way that we structure our days. That was what we felt we wanted to do in order to feel best prepared. "It just gave us the level of confidence that we wanted knowing that we've done all we can." The 15-team field at the Halifax Curling Club includes Switzerland's Silvana Tirinzoni, Winnipeg's Jennifer Jones (with Chelsea Carey at skip) and Italy's Stefania Constantini. In their opening game, Grandy defeated Laurie St-Georges (Montreal, QC) 7-2, then won 6-2 against Tori Zemmelink (Guelph, ON) and 5-4 against Marie Christianson (Halifax, NS). "We feel like we've been putting in the work and now we're feeling more comfortable and starting to get into a little bit of a groove on the ice," Grandy told CurlingZone. Grandy, 32, and her Vancouver-based rink of Kayla MacMillan, Lindsay Dubue and Sarah Loken - all in their mid-20s - finished 6-4 in their debut Scotties appearance last season as the B.C. representative in Kamloops. Grandy also played at the 2017 Canadian Curling Trials in Ottawa as a third for Allison Flaxey. "I learned a lot, I would say," Grandy said. "I think the experience is helpful, just being in that atmosphere. The Trials is a whole other ballgame from anything else that you play." In the last quadrennial, Grandy also worked as an assistant coach for Jaap van Dorp's men's team out of the Netherlands. She felt that experience also helped make her a more well-rounded curler. "Watching a lot from behind the sheet at the Europeans and at the worlds, I think that gave me a really good perspective on the game," Grandy said. "I've tried to bring that to my career as a skip." Grandy won the Masters with Flaxey in 2016 and skipped her current team to a Tier-2 title at last year's Tour Challenge. The team is also entered in next week's KIOTI National in Pictou County, N.S. "It just takes so much more than just going out there and playing well," Grandy said. "It's all the little things as well that need to go right and you need to be on top of in order to be performing at that level. So that's the stage that we're in right now. We feel like we're working as hard as we possibly can be. "We're dedicating everything to curling right now. So we feel like we're setting ourselves up for success in the long-term with that." The Stu Sells event wraps up on Sunday at the Halifax Curling Club. Select games are live-streamed on YouTube with links available on the CurlingZone website (www.curlingzone.com).