Belleville News-Democrat | 02/12/2006 | Sister act is key for U.S. curlers
Country has never won a medal in this eventAssociated PressTURIN, Italy – Cassie and Jamie Johnson never had to choose between sport and family.
The sisters are the top two curlers on the U.S. women’s team, giving the Americans their best hope for an Olympic medal in the sport long played by Canadians, Scandinavians and at least four generations of the Johnson family.
“My sister, she played with my grandparents, my aunts and my uncles. That’s mainly what we did,” Jamie Johnson said Saturday after her real family and her curling one gave her a surprise bridal shower in Turin. “It must be in the blood or something. We just really enjoy curling so much.”
Although extremely popular in Canada and other frozen climes, curling remains a niche sport in the United States, spread mainly across the upper Midwest and pockets of New England. Though it has had difficulty finding new converts — a struggle diminished in the glow of an Olympic year — the sport passes easily in families from one generation to the next.
Pete Fenson will skip, or captain, the U.S. men’s team coached by his father, Bob Fenson, the 1979 national champion. The grandparents of U.S. women’s lead Maureen Brunt were curlers, and a cousin finished second at the 2002 Olympic trials.
The Johnsons trace their curling lineage to their great-grandparents; the Olympians started when Jamie was in first grade and Cassie kindergarten.
“She and I have been curling together for more than 15 years. It’s not new,” Jamie Johnson said. “We’re the best of friends and we know each other so well on the ice and off. It’s so special for our family to see the sisters on the ice together.”
Now 24 and 25, the Johnson sisters have a chance to win the first curling medals for the U.S. Brunt and Jessica Schultz are the third and fourth wheels for a sister act that poses a few extra challenges: Although the sport allows for a pre-throw strategy confab, the Johnsons sometimes seem to know what the other is thinking, leaving their ice-mates out in the cold.
“I think because we’ve been curling together so long, that we don’t have to really communicate too much,” Jamie said. “Once in a while, they’re like, ‘This is kind of weird.”‘
Her little sister echoed the thought.
“We’ve curled together for so long we both have the same idea and the same strategy,” she said. “We don’t need to talk too much about the shots.”
None of their teammates is complaining.
“It’s really cool having them on the team. It brings us all closer together as a team,” Schultz said. “In a way, we’re all sisters. We even bicker like sisters do.”
They have plenty of material for that: Schultz, Brunt and George live together in a three-bedroom apartment; the Johnson sisters share an apartment across the street in Bemidji, Minn.
But while they might squabble over dirty dishes in the sink — like sisters sometimes do — when they’re on the ice for a match, they put aside any squabbling and support each other.
“You kind of become like a family when you’re on a team like this,” Cassie Johnson said.
The Johnson family is about to grow: Jamie is getting married in June. She was expecting her fiance, Nick Haskell, to join her in Italy next week, but an Olympic sponsor arranged to fly him over early for the surprise shower.
Haskell was just a few feet away, kneeling and holding a huge bouquet of flowers, while Johnson was explaining to a news conference why he couldn’t be in Italy until next week. After he joined her on stage, the usually bashful bride-to-be gave him a kiss for the cameras.
“I said, ‘I won’t do it when the games are going on.’ I want it to be a special time for her,” Haskell said. “I don’t want to throw her timing off. It’s kind of a big distraction.”
Haskell, who learned curling in high school gym class — a common occurrence in Bemidji — thought fast when Johnson called him on his cell phone while he was changing planes in Chicago; he ducked into a men’s room so the departure announcements wouldn’t be heard.
The surprise was almost ruined when the curling team visited the USOC office and saw a press release trumpeting the event. Brunt and Schultz grabbed all the copies and hid them.
The more shy of the siblings, Jamie Johnson gave up the authoritative “skip” position on the team to her little sister about 10 years ago. So Cassie Johnson wondered whether a very public shower might not be Jamie’s idea of a good time.
Not to worry, Jamie said: “The surprise is way better than the press conference that I thought it would be.”
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