More experienced Team Sturmay ready to outperform expectations again

When Selena Sturmay returned to work late last February after a couple of weeks off, more than a few of her coworkers at Edmonton’s Stollery Children’s Hospital pointed out that the nurse they work alongside had failed to mention a pretty big detail about her life.
 
“They all said they saw me on TV, and that’s how they found out I curled,” Sturmay says now, with a laugh. “It was kind of funny coming back to that at work. But I like to keep it as low-key as possible — I don’t like to draw attention to myself.”
 
Well, there was nothing low-key about Sturmay’s debut at the Scotties last year, which happened to come in her home province. In Calgary, the skip led her Team Alberta to a 7-1 round-robin record that included an upset win over the defending champions led by Manitoba’s Kerri Einarson, who were looking for a fourth-straight title.
 
Sturmay, third Danielle Schmiemann, second Dezaray Hawes and lead Paige Papley ranked first in their pool, then earned another upset in the playoff round, ultimately finishing fourth in the event, which was won by Team Ontario and Rachel Homan (who’ve hardly stopped winning since.)
 
It’s Homan’s defending world and national championship team who are the heavy favourites at the 2025 Scotties, which opens Friday in Thunder Bay, Ont., walking in there with a sparkling 45-4 record this season. But this field is full of contenders, and that includes the Alberta squad skipped by Sturmay, who made quite the debut at the Scotties last season, despite nerves so bad that Papley says: “I don’t think any of us stomached a meal on the first day.”
 
Ranked No. 5 in Canada last year, Team Sturmay is now No. 12 after a season partly spent adapting to technical changes. Coach Ted Appelman says the drop in ranking doesn’t tell the story of their progress. “We are a better team now entering this Scotties than we were last year,” Appelman says, pointing to a small tour event called the Crestwood Platinum Anniversary Showdown they won last month as “one of the best events they’ve played in the last two years.”
 
Team Sturmay expected to follow that up with a bid to win Alberta’s provincials for the second straight year, but the skip got an unexpected and welcome call from Curling Canada on New Year’s Eve, inquiring whether her team wanted an automatic berth to the national bonspiel, bypassing provincials in the curling hotbed that is Alberta. (Kayla Skrlik’s rink won provincials, and they’re ranked third in the country.)
 
“That was kind of a no-brainer,” Sturmay says, of her team’s decision to accept the automatic Scotties berth, adding, “we were not expecting news like this.”
 
Few were. The opportunity came after the team skipped by Manitoba’s Chelsea Carey saw third Karlee Burgess leave to join forces with Canada’s second-ranked Team Einarson. That disqualified Team Carey from its automatic berth due to too many personnel changes, and Team Sturmay earned it based on their 2023-24 Canadian team ranking.
 
Appelman is looking forward to what will be a second Scotties for most of the team (it’s a fourth for Hawes), now with rookie nerves behind them and that valuable learning experience under their belt.
 
“This is probably the most chill team you’re going to come across, but there were moments last year, like the game against Einarson — we’re beating one of the best teams in the country in front of all those people in an evening draw, and we’re trying to close the game out,” the coach says. “You could see the nerves on the team. Really, this was a new situation for them, right? To handle that and get through it and be successful in that situation was huge, and honestly it propelled them the rest of the week.”
 
Sturmay and her teammates own junior national and U Sports titles, yet some didn’t expect them to make the waves they did at the Scotties last year. “I’ve taken a lot of time to reflect on it, and I know that a lot of the media has kind of gravitated towards it being our breakout year and that we were kind of like a no-name team before, but I do like to kind of argue [against] that a little bit,” the 26-year-old Sturmay says. “I think it was just one of those years where we were catching the attention of curling fans and the curling audience that may not follow juniors or may not know other events other than the Scotties.”

Papley, who began playing with Sturmay in 2017 and won the 2019 Canadian junior title with her, points to confidence being one of her skip’s top assets. “I think she believes in herself so much that it doesn’t matter how hard the shot is, she’s fearless and she’s going to make it,” Papley says. “And she inspires confidence in each of us as well. She believes in us. She believes in herself, and so she just expects that we do the same. I think it’s a phenomenal leadership characteristic.”

Appelman points to Sturmay’s ability to see and call the game three or four shots ahead as another attribute that makes her one of the best. “For Selena, the sky’s the limit,” the coach says.

Despite her confidence and ability, Sturmay says she did battle “a little bit of imposter syndrome” in her debut at the Scotties. That won’t be the case Friday, as her Team Alberta plays in the opening draw of the bonspiel at 7 p.m. ET against Team B.C.
 
“I think it took me a long time last year to fully believe that, you know what, I belong here. I’m one of the top players and we’re one of the top teams in Canada,” Sturmay says. “I think the second time going into it, we’re going to have a little bit different mentality and really owning that confidence and knowing that we belong there — and that we’re just as good as anybody else.”