27 October 2024

Scot down under: How Helen Williams rekindled her curling spark in Australia

Two Scots can quickly get onto the topic of weather, the bittersweet element that creates the most beautiful greenery across the country, but also brings the unwelcome cold, wind and rain more than it does the sun.

There is a playful smugness to Helen Williams, who hails from the south-west port town of Stranraer, when speaking about the weather, no longer having to endure the dark winters.

“I stayed for the weather – sorry to do this to you,” said Williams.

While I overlooked the foggy Glasgow horizon from my window, Williams’ Octobers are much more pleasant. She lives in sunny Perth in Australia, a nation that increasingly sees Scots move to due to work opportunities and, more than just a couple of weeks of summer.

Olympic Dreams Interrupted

Once Scottish curling great Rhona Martin’s lead, she was eyeing the return of curling at the Olympic Winter Games in Nagano in 1998. But the year before, she injured her right ankle while on holiday and broke a bone in her foot.

“That was probably my sliding door moment,” she said.

“I decided that was my time to have a year overseas because I’d been working, curling and training lots.

“I went to Australia for a year in 1998 – and I never came back.”

While Williams was disappointed with the injury – and the time she had dedicated to the sport while balancing her work as a junior doctor – the move gave her a new lease of life.

Two years of healthcare employment turned into residency and now she works as a paediatrician at Perth Children’s Hospital, while also teaching medicine students at the University of Western Australia.

curling Passion Returns

Finding out there were curlers in Australia, she went to Bendigo – two hours north of Melbourne – and played over a weekend on a converted skating rink. “It had water dripping onto the ice,” she said.

Playing at a high level in Scotland paid off – Williams was asked to not only curl for the Australian women’s team, but also become the new skip. An alien concept to her at the time.

She only met her third Lynn Hewitt, mother of mixed doubles star Dean Hewitt, at the hotel in Jeonju, Korea prior to their first game together at the 2001 Pacific Curling Championships. They went onto to win a bronze medal.

Playing at the event for four years in a row, she then took a break while having her children. This long time away from the sport was finally broke when now World Curling vice-president Kim Forge convinced her to play on the national team at the World Mixed Curling Championship in 2016 and 2017. Her husband Mark further convinced her to join Hugh Millikin’s rink for the competition. She was back, at the age of 43, after over a decade away.

“Those two mixed events really got me back into enjoying competitive curling,” said Williams.

“Then I got my arm twisted by Dustin Armstrong, who’s currently our coach.

“He said I need to get back into playing women’s curling.”

She trained with Armstrong’s men’s team off the ice and wanted to continue playing. Forge was brought in alongside Michelle Fredericks Armstrong, Dustin’s wife, and Ashleigh Street, another young Scot who had moved over to Australia. Their 2017 appearance at the Pacific-Asia Curling Championships was Williams’ first international women’s event in 13 years.

Speed at which skill level is increasing is “exciting”

Another opportunity came last year at the Pan Continental Curling Championships, being the alternate for Jennifer Westhagen’s rink, who would face relegation to the B-Division this season. Winning the Australian title this year, Williams now skips her own team of Sara Westman, Karen Titheridge and Kristin Tsourlenes at the 2024 edition, with Michelle Fredericks-Armstrong remaining as an alternate.

True to Australia’s demographics, her quartet also consists of Canadians Titheridge and Westman too, with Tsourlenes being the “true blue Aussie” who found the sport through Dean Hewitt, who she went to school with. A nation of immigrants, represented by immigrants.

But Williams returns to the continental fold seven years on from her last full appearance. There, her team were unable to win a single game – far from their bronze 16 years before, showing the depth and improvements in the sport around the world in a short space of time. After last year’s disappointment, she now has the chance to battle for promotion back up to the A-Division.

“Australia was disappointing last year when we were demoted down into the Bs, but that’s the reality of sport,” she said.

“You have to be able to compete and you need to be able to meet the standard that’s required.

“It’s one of the exciting things about the sport: the speed with which the skill level is increasing.”

Australia will expect competition from Kazakhstan and Jamaica in a bid to immediately return to the A-Division.

Curling continues to grow in Aus

While the nation has had to battle against the improving countries around them, Williams has witnessed the development across Australian curling like few others. Being part of the national set-up since 2001, she remembers the stars of today when they were just children.

“I’ve seen progress in Australia over the last 25 years that I’ve been here,” she said.

“We’ve now got quite stable clubs in Melbourne and Queensland and in Perth where I’m from. They’re really coming along and that’s so exciting to see because that’s the future of the sport.”

With Dean Hewitt and Tahli Gill representing the country at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games in the mixed doubles, there is a lot of excitement about curling, something that Williams hopes to capture in this upcoming event.

“My ultimate aim is always to try and represent Australia well with the long-term goal of promoting the sport within Australia.

“We will have played maybe nine or ten games now together as a team; every game is a learning opportunity.

“We’ll be focused on our individual goals for each game and also our team goals for each game. Bring the best we can and see how it turns out, but focused on process rather than outcome.”

Turns out a gap year truly is life-changing.

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