Canada's Einarson ran pandemic gauntlet to compete in a 'normal' world championship

Kerri Einarson's team spent the back half of their four years together curling through a pandemic, and posted some of their greatest successes during that time.

Eyebrows raised when a team of former skips came together in the spring of 2018 with Einarson, Val Sweeting, Shannon Birchard and Brianne Meilleur joining forces.

Winning a third straight Canadian championship in February sent the Gimli Curling Club foursome out of Manitoba to its first "normal" world championship in Prince George, B.C.

Canada opens the 13-country championship Saturday against Italy and Norway at the 6,000-seat CN Centre.

The host team will have what's felt like a rarity to them — a building full of unmasked fans cheering for them.

It's been a journey for this team since winning its first Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Moose Jaw, Sask., in February of 2020.

They subsequently arrived in Prince George ready to compete for a world title when the first wave of the COVID-19 virus wiped out international sporting events, including theirs.

Einarson and company then ran the gauntlet of cancelled events, closed training facilities, adaptations and curling bubbles for almost two years.

"It's been an absolute emotional roller-coaster that's for sure," Einarson said.

"You're packing your bags to go to an event and all of a sudden, you're unpacking them, so it's been extremely challenging, but we have overcome so much adversity.

"We just kept pushing hard. Even if we weren't at curling events, we were watching games, we were hitting the gym extremely hard, doing those off-ice things that helped us keep our game sharp if we couldn't necessarily get on the ice."

Sweeting, the team's out-of-province player from Alberta, went months without seeing her