Young nurse Courtney Smith narrowly missed winning NZ a place in mixed doubles curling at the 2022 Winter Olympics, but she's determined to give it one more shot.
Curling and Covid-19 vaccinations will take up much of Courtney Smith's time for the rest of this year.
The third-year Dunedin nursing student is in her final days of quarantine in Auckland, after returning from the curling mixed doubles world championships in Scotland.
Smith and her doubles partner, Anton Hood, travelled across the world to compete for a direct spot for New Zealand at next year's Beijing Winter Olympics.
The 21-year-olds fell agonisingly short of their goal - a last-stone loss against the United States ruled them out of playing for the last direct entry for Beijing.
But it's not over yet. Both Smith and Hood are determined to win the national mixed doubles title this season and get another opportunity to make the 2022 Olympics at the final qualifying event later this year. There, they could grab one of the two spots still available to make up the 10 Olympic curling nations.
“The goal for Anton and I is to take away all the things that we've learnt from competing on this world stage and put that back into our local season so we can work on getting that top spot,” says Smith, after finishing 12th in the world. "I've come away with so much that I want to work on when I'm allowed out [of quarantine]."
Another mission Smith has for the year is to complete her nursing qualifications and to help get the people of Dunedin vaccinated against Covid-19.
She will be straight back out on the ice, too, with New Zealand's domestic curling season starting this week.
Given the hectic lead-up and number of obstacles the pair went through just to get to Scotland, Smith is in high spirits going into the season.
Smith and Hood had not played together on the ice for nearly five years. But when last year's New Zealand mixed doubles champions were unable to make the international event, Smith and Hood took their place, even when the task to be competitive at a world championship and Olympic qualifier was massive.
“The commentators kind of laughed when they realised we'd only had five days of training before we flew over and stepped on that world stage. It was pretty intense,” says Smith, who was the 2019 national women’s junior curling champion.
“It was a whirlwind experience. We didn’t actually think we would be able to make it over until about three weeks beforehand, and we almost didn’t catch our flight at Auckland Airport."
The airline they were leaving on was initially not convinced they had all the documentation they needed, but after frantically searching through their pile of papers, the pair found the one required sentence which allowed them to fly.
“So I was just so thankful to be over there. It was my first world event outside of playing in the juniors,” says Smith, who represented New Zealand at the 2016 Lillehammer Olympic Winter Youth Games.
They were one of the youngest teams competing in Scotland and the only team who travelled with no support staff. But Smith says they were fortunate to have national coach, Peter de Boer, travel to Dunedin before they flew out to go over certain game scenarios.
For Smith, the weeks leading up to the world championship were “absolutely mental.”
She trained before and after her 8am to 5pm work hours on nursing placement. Some sessions involved driving to Naseby, one-and-a-half hours from Dunedin, to train with Hood in New Zealand's curling capital, then either driving home late that night or early the next morning.
Smith grew up in the small Otago town of Maniototo, which has an ice rink five minutes down the road. But she didn’t pick up curling until she was 13, when a friend encouraged her to join the school team.
“I never like to do things by halves, so once I started, I just wanted to get better. Then that never really stopped," Smith laughs. "I love the drive in sport; it’s a really important part of my life.”
How would she then describe the sport to someone who hasn’t seen it before?
Smith says the basic idea behind the sport is throwing a stone down a sheet of ice. “There's this colourful target at the end, which we call the house, and at the very centre of the house, is this black dot called the pin,” she explains.
“Basically, if you can get as many of your stones as close to the pin, that’s a good start.”
When she’s not on the ice, Smith is doing what's needed to complete her nursing qualification by the end of this year.
Before she left for Scotland, Smith managed to fit in getting some immunisation certificates on top of her coursework. She still needs to finalise the requirements but when she does, Smith will work part-time as a vaccinator in a local Dunedin clinic.
She says the pandemic has had major influences on the nursing course, but admits she feels for the students who've recently graduated.
“We’ve had a lot more education around global pandemics now, where they were suddenly thrown into this whirlwind that they weren’t prepared for in any way,” she says.
“But I have huge respect for every single health professional in this Covid pandemic because if you look at the state of our health system at the moment, and how much stress people are under compared to normally, Covid has been an overwhelming time for them. My heart goes out to a lot of people.”
Seeing the differences while competing in Scotland, showed how “lucky” New Zealand is, Smith says.
“They're still going through a lot,” says Smith. “I'm actually really worried about what we're going to see in about five years time with the burnout in people in the health industry because the tax on this is huge. In New Zealand we’re lucky with how things have gone; it could definitely be a lot worse but it could also be a lot better.”
Nursing was a natural career choice for Smith. In secondary school she was part of St John's youth programme and completed a cadet training.
“I’ve always been interested in health. I just love the medical side of things and I really do care about issues and people,” she says. “And it’s something I can take anywhere with me which is really awesome."
In the meantime, she’ll have to do much of the same with her time management skills when it comes to both her study and sport. Especially when she starts the next 120-hour placement in three weeks time at ICU in Dunedin.
While in quarantine, Smith is trying to submit two assignments - she made a point of not studying much while she was in Scotland. “I didn't want to swamp myself by doing coursework while I was competing,” she says.
“With curling, it’s a lot of strategy, thinking, analysing things, so I have to be very aware of what I’m doing outside of that. Because you really don’t want to have mental burnout so it's just about finding the activities that complement what you're doing.”
Her focus in the sport is always on her own performances. “It’s a big honour putting that uniform on, so it's just about trying to be the best you can be, at that time,” says Smith.
“So for me it's about resetting and taking what I’ve learnt and implementing that into my training, so next time I step out on that ice, I’m always improving."
Smith and Hood will leave quarantine on Thursday and hop on a plane to Dunedin. The next day, they’ll get straight back onto the ice after a month away from home, when the curling season starts.
“I’m just really excited to be curling again,” Smith says. “It's going to be awesome to be out, back on the ice and doing something.”
