Celebrating female champions for IWD 2022: If shuffleboard met curling

7th March 2022SHUFL Community

We’re celebrating female champions for International Women’s Day (IWD) 2022, shining a light on a couple of inspiring females at the top of their game in two sports that are hot right now: Shuffleboard and Curling.

If you didn’t already know, the current reigning European Shuffleboard Champion is female. Norwegian Yvla Thorsrud was the victor of the last tournament, held in London in 2019, successfully defending her 2018 title.  You can imagine our excitement when Scottish skipper Eve Muirhead led the GB Women’s Curling team to victory and bagged Olympic Gold in Beijing!  It took us right back to London’s shuffleboard showdown in 2019 and got us thinking about how awesome an Yvla v Eve puck off on a SHUFL. table would be!

Shuffleboard and Curling – essentially shuffleboard on ice – have lots in common: competitors play alternately from two ends, you score points by landing and keeping your stones or pucks in the scoring zone, and both games can be played in teams of up to four.

We’re so pleased to be celebrating female champions; Yvla and Eve, two awesome female sliders, would make for the ultimate shuffleboard showdown! Here’s how we reckon an Yvla v Eve match would stack up, based on previous form:

  • Experience – Both have it in spades! Eve made her Olympic Winter Games debut at Vancouver in 2010. Four years later, she went on to become the youngest ever skip to win a Winter Olympic medal, guiding her rink to bronze in Sochi. Yvla has won three single event titles in 2016, 2018 and 2019 as well as Team EM Gothenburg back in 2015 with Endre Eikeseth.
  • Laser precision focus – they’re both really skilled at zoning out the crowd
  • Ability to read the conditions – Eve is expert at reading the ice in Curling, while Yvla knows how to play The Curve on a SHUFL. playfield
  • Strategic game play – both sports demand a strategic game plan using all the best gameplay to keep your opponent out of the scoring zone and both ladies are masterful at this
  • Winning mentality – they both have the grit and determination to know what it takes to win
  • Dedication – both women put in the hours with lots of practice and nerves of steel. Eve’s been playing since she was nine and Yvla played for five years without winning any tournaments before mastering the playfield – she never gave up!
  • Consistency and great hand and eye co-ordination – they hardly ever put a foot wrong, the true sign of a champion

So, who’s your money on?

Fancy yourself as a future Yvla or Eve?  What are you waiting for?! Get on a SHUFL. table and get practising and who knows it might be you we’re celebrating as a female champion on IWD next year.  Find out where to play SHUFL. here.

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