Men’s Cougars curling takes on international competition
hana grace, contributor
Italy: the land of wine, pizza, pasta and this month, the International University Sports Federation (FISU) Curling competition, where the University of Regina was well represented.
FISU held their international competition in Torino, Italy, over a ten-day span from Jan. 13 to 23, 2025. Ten sports competitions were held for university-level athletes . Representing the University of Regina were: skip Joshua Bryden, third Adam Bukurak,second Carter Williamson and lead Ayden Whittmire. The close-knit team has played lots leading up to their big international trip: regular season games in Saskatchewan and Alberta, the Canada West Qualifiers, and the U Sports Nationals in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Following their win against Dalhousie in Fredericton, they won both the National title and a ticket to Torino.
Ayden Whittmire, the lead for UofR’s Team Bryden has been curling for almost 14 years. Originally from Lethbridge, he is currently a fifth-year Human Kinetics student . Whittmire, who is a front-end player, says he has a lot of faith in his skip,Joshua Bryden, and his ability to read the game: “Josh is awesome! He knows a lot. I kind of just trust what he’s got going on. He’s always thinking and he’s always scheming, but it works out for us. He’s really smart and good at the game. It’s about just trusting what he’s seeing and what he’s calling and just trying to do our best to make shots for him.” Bryden definitely knew what he was doing. The team made it all the way to the bronze medal game of the Torino competition. They lost the final game but finished the tournament fourth overall.
Teams from all over the world came to compete. In the men’s curling event alone there were ten teams, including the Cougars. Gold went to Norway, silver to team USA and bronze to Switzerland.
This was the final wrap up for the UofR’s 2024 curling season. The FISU international games are only held once every two years, so the qualification process spans over the course of a few seasons.
Even though the team didn’t come home with any hardware, they did share memorable experiences from their trip to Italy. Whittmire reflected : “After one of our games, they had a bunch of Italian school kids up in the stands. One of them came up to me, and he’s like, ‘Hey, can I get a picture with you?’ I was like, ‘I guess so?’ But then, three or four other kids came up after and they were just super excited to take pictures with us. It was kind of a cool moment! I felt like a celebrity. It was really weird.”
In discussing other aspects of the trip, Whittmire said, “We didn’t do a ton of touring. We got there a couple days early and got acclimated, and looked around a little bit, had some food, the regular, but not a whole lot of sightseeing. Torino is not like a huge touristy town. It’s kind of more authentic Italian.”
The team had very little time off before they went back on the ice for the Canada West Competition in Calgary the weekend of Jan. 31. The top two teams from there head to the National U Sports competition in Lethbridge at the end of February.
Team Bryden hopes t and have more confidence going into the 2025 tournamentseason after their run in Italy, and to make it back to Nationals to defend UofR’s title. “We definitely learned a lot about the ice, and about each other. I think it does give us an advantage just playing against those top tier teams with different strategies, different skills,” Whittmire acknowledged.
Whittmire is in his final year of eligibility for UofR’s curling program. He is unsure what his future in curling will look like and is currently focused on the present: “I haven’t really thought about it too much. I mean, obviously it’d be nice to defend the national championship and be two-time national champs, but beyond that, I’m not too sure.”
Whittmire hopes that people might check out the sport and get interested in trying it out themselves, now that the UofR team has brought some traction back to campus.When asked if the team has brought some street cred to the game , Whittmire laughed: “I don’t know if we’re the group of guys to do that, but yeah. I mean, if more people check it out, that’d definitely be awesome.”
Team Bryden will be in Calgary for the Canada West competition from Jan. 31 to Feb. 2. Catch all the action on CanadaWest.TV. If they finish first or second, they’ll head to nationals in Lethbridge from Feb.24 to 28 2025.
