Swiss curling’s new era: Huerlimann’s historic breakthrough

Corrie Huerlimann’s rink started the 2024–2025 season with just three wins in their opening four tournaments. That was a return of three victories from 18 games.

Yet just months later, they would end the four-year winning streak of Silvana Tirinzoni at the 2025 Swiss Women’s Curling Championship. Tirinzoni, a four-time world champion, defeated Team Huerlimann in the round-robin stage, but lost the semi-finals of the competition by a 7-4 margin.

And by the end of that week, the skip who had struggled to string positive results together at the beginning was now lifting the prestigious trophy. Despite a 6-5 loss to Xenia Schwaller in the first of the best-of-three series, a convincing 5-2 win brought the scores level. Team Huerlimann won the decider 7-6, completing the upset few would have expected in September.

Corrie Huerlimann © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

A rollercoaster season

“At the beginning, we started trying different line-ups,” said Huerlimann, speaking to World Curling earlier this year.

The 27-year-old rotated a line-up consisting of Marina Loertscher, Sarah Mueller, Celine Schwizgebel and Stefanie Berset in different positions and with different players acting as alternates.

Although results seemed to improve marginally with quarter-final runs in the Tallinn Ladies International Challenger and Sundbyberg Open, Huerlimann made the difficult decision to part ways with Mueller — meaning a quartet continued without an alternate.

For a fresh start, they headed to the Collingwood Classic, defeating some strong Canadian opposition before losing in the semi-finals. The next week, they defeated Japan’s 15th-ranked team skipped by Ikue Kitazawa at the Abbotsford Curling Classic — their first title of the season.

Semi-final runs at the S3 Group Curling Stadium Series and Perth Masters either side of New Year showed promise — before losing to Team Schwaller in the semi-finals of the International Bernese Ladies Cup, the warm-up event for the Swiss Championships.

And that run to the Swiss title could have played out differently. They required a last-round 5-3 victory over Elodie Jerger to progress to the play-offs, where they handed out another defeat to Roxanne Heritier’s side by a 10-3 margin. It came after losses to Schwaller and Tirinzoni in the round-robin, with the latter beating them 4-3. She described this stage of the competition, much like their season to that point, had been a “rollercoaster”.

“It was a very tight game [in the round-robin] and I think that was enough to give us the confidence to think we’re actually really close and we all said next time we’ll have them,” said Huerlimann, reflecting on their defeat to the greats at the Swiss Championship.

“We always performed well, so that gave us lots of confidence going into the play-offs knowing we just have to keep up with that and then the centimetres will turn on our side and that’s what we did.”

Team Huerlimann © World Curling / Stephen Fisher

Confidence is key

Heading into that semi-final, Huerlimann’s rink had a 0-5 record against Schwaller and Tirinzoni over the past 12 months. Despite that, the belief was there. The 7-4 semi-final victory over Tirinzoni even came with a missed opportunity to kill the game earlier. Even then, the skip was composed enough to ensure the win went their way.

“We all felt we could win with the confidence we had and that we could beat Team Tirinzoni,” she said, “We weren’t scared of them so that helped us a lot.

“We had the chance to win in the seventh, but missed a chance for three. We never gave up or let that influence our performance.

“After then going into the final against Xenia we just knew we could win it.”

Despite going one game down in the final, the comeback was phenomenal against Schwaller, who had previously handed her team a few resounding defeats.

“The last final was really cool for all of us,” added Huerlimann.

“We thought we have nothing to lose, then the pressure is on them right now.

“We knew winning the second game is always the hardest, so we said let’s just go out there and play and then we’ll see if it was enough or not.”

Looking ahead to the Europeans

The two wins changed the course of their season, which looked doomed in the autumn and since then, has asked: what will come next?

What we do know is by winning the title, Team Huerlimann will represent Switzerland at the 2025 European Curling Championships; their first opportunity to represent their nation at a major senior competition.

“Since 2019 it’s always been Tirinzoni at the European and World Championships for Switzerland, so it’s a really a great feeling and I’m very excited for my team and what will come for us all the next few years,” she said.

“It feels even more special because we realised, we really can win this.

“If you beat Tirinzoni, who can’t you beat?”

Corrie Huerlimann during practice day © World Curling / Alessio Bergadano

A Family affair

Swiss curling is in a special place at the moment, with the Schwaller and Huerlimann families a big part of it.

While Tirinzoni has dominated on the women’s side, Yannick Schwaller has emerged as the leading men’s skip for the country. His mixed doubles partner is his wife, Briar Schwaller-Huerlimann, who is also Corrie’s sister. Briar won world gold and European silver with Team Tirinzoni in the 2022–2023 season. Much as the surname suggests, Xenia Schwaller is the cousin of Yannick too. We will get to see in-laws represent Switzerland at the 2025 European Curling Championships across the men’s and women’s teams.

“It feels like a big family with Yannick, going to the Europeans with my brother-in-law will be interesting,” she added.

And that family affair extends to her parents. Corrie’s mother, world bronze medallist Janet Huerlimann, coaches her rink, while her father Patrick was part of Switzerland’s squad that claimed gold at the Nagano 1998 Winter Olympic Games. He later was pivotal in creating the world rankings system and became a Vice-President of World Curling in 2010 and a World Curling Hall of Famer in 2014.

Representing Switzerland “won’t get any easier”

These days, winning the Swiss title puts you in good stead internationally, with the women’s world gold medal going to the country eight times in the last 12 editions. Looking forward, Huerlimann points out the talent of the Schwaller and Tirinzoni rinks adding it “won’t get easier trying to play for Switzerland internationally”.

“Competition is really high and it won’t get weaker because there are also still very young teams, especially over the next four years until 2030,” said Huerlimann.

“It seems easy stepping in their footsteps because from the outside it maybe looks so easy right?

“They’re just winning, winning, winning but it takes lots of experience in order to win the European and World Championships, but we will give it our best and try to continue that reputation of Swiss Curling.

“There’s no one there that we haven’t beaten so I think everything is possible.”

Team Huerlimann © World Curling / Alessio Bergadano

Enjoyment brings results

It has been a shorter summer than usual for Team Huerlimann. They got back on the ice at the end of July, looking to find their best form in time for their trip to Lohja, Finland, for their first European Championships.

“We didn’t want too much volume before the Europeans, but enough volume that we played enough games, just that we’re not burned out by November,” she said, just a few days before the tournaments gets underway, having just returned from a final training camp with the national coach.

The start of this season was akin to what happened a year ago. It was a rocky start, with three wins from eight in their first two competitions.

“We put a bit too much pressure on ourselves because we wanted to perform from the beginning because of the Europeans,” added Huerlimann.

“Then we talked about it and tried to just enjoy curling again, and that’s where the results started getting better again. So I find we’re now at a very good point to be able to play our best curling this week.”

Once that enjoyment shone through, the results did too. They ran Rebecca Morrison’s Scotland, who finished runners-up, close by an 8-7 margin in the quarter-finals of the AMJ Masters tournament. Without a “couple of stupid rocks”, Huerlimann’s rink would not have conceded two with the hammer in the final end against Dilsat Yilmaz’s Türkiye in the semi-finals where they lost 4-3. Any other day, that would have seen them on their way to the final.

Representing one of the powerhouses might make the Le Gruyère AOP European Curling Championships a big occasion for them, but their track record shows that they are at their best when they strip it back to why they still compete — for the love of the game.

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