November 25, 2003

Asia drawn into house of curling

Canadian coaches clear the way for Korea, Japan

Adam Daifallah

National Post

If and when an Asian curling team beats Canada for a gold medal at the World Curling Championships, we will have a pair of British Columbia women to blame.

The teachings of Elaine Dagg-Jackson, recognized as one of Canada's top curling coaches, and Melissa Soligo, a Dagg-Jackson protegé, have brought a pair of Pacific Rim countries from curling obscurity to the cusp of the world's elite.

This week, as the Pacific Curling Championships take place in Aomori City, Japan, the world championship berths that once were the exclusive right of Australia will instead be a hotly-contested fight that will include Japan and South Korea.

Dagg-Jackson began working with Japan in 1994 when it undertook a four-year training program leading into the 1998 Winter Olympics. Working with her husband, Glen, they achieved some amazing results. In four years, the women's team moved from ninth to fourth in the world rankings and placed fifth at the Nagano Olympics. The men's team, which had never been ranked at the world level, rose so precipitously they nearly advanced to the medal round at Nagano, losing in a tie-breaker and finishing fifth as well.

"According to sport experts, it takes a minimum of 10 years or 10,000 hours to produce a champion," Dagg-Jackson says. "Asia has demonstrated how an intense, planned training program can accelerate the time required to achieve performance excellence."

Dagg-Jackson had to resign from coaching the Japanese when she agreed to oversee Kelly Law's team at the 2000 world championships. When word of her free-agent status emerged, South Korea scooped her up shortly thereafter. She has replicated the Japanese success with them.

"Korea had never competed internationally," Dagg-Jackson says. "The women qualified for worlds in the second year of the program, and the men in the third."

There are no curling clubs in South Korea. The curlers there are forced to play on hockey ice. But with financial assistance from the Korean Curling Federation, the teams fly into Victoria to practise three or four times a year (more if they qualify for the world championships.)

This week's Pacific Championships will be a big test for the South Koreans because it is the first time they are playing in the event without Canadian coaching.

Dagg-Jackson no longer coaches abroad, having recently become the full-time Canadian National Women's Team Leader. She has handed things over to Melissa Soligo, a veteran coach herself who played on the 1991 Canadian championship rink of Julie Skinner (née Sutton). Soligo previously had been assisting Dagg-Jackson with the South Koreans.

"I've been working with Elaine for many years, she was my coach way back," says Soligo, who can no longer curl herself after a 1996 car accident. "She's been my coaching mentor from then on. I just love coaching the international teams."

Both teams were in Victoria for the past two weeks preparing for this week's championships, and they will come back for a month in January or February, if they qualify for the worlds. The women's team of skip Mi Yeon Kim, vice Hyun Jung Lee, second Mi Sung Shin and lead Ji Hyun Park qualified for the first time in 2002, but won no games.

"They speak very, very little English and I don't speak any Korean," says Soligo, acknowledging that the language barrier can be difficult but that their English is improving. "We do have an opportunity for a translator once in a while but most of the time it's just me and them."

The men's team -- skip Dong-keun Lee, vice Jae-cheol Park, second Seung-wan Ko and lead Min-suk Choi -- first qualified for the worlds last year and won one game. They continue to improve.

The team was in Victoria for a month in October and played in four cash spiels. They qualified at the BDO Curling Classic -- a World Curling Tour event -- in Kamloops and walked away with $4,000.

"Those four guys have done as much as I've ever seen any team do to achieve results in a short period of time," Dagg-Jackson says. "They have worked incredibly hard."

adaifallah@nationalpost.com

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