THUNDER BAY -- The 2025 Scotties Tournament of Hearts is slated for Feb. 14-23 at the Fort William Gardens in Thunder Bay, Ont. Eighteen women’s teams will compete in the national curling championship. Meet the teams:
Team Canada
The defending champions, led by skip Rachel Homan, will be a tough out as the Ottawa Curling Club foursome – with vice-skip Tracy Fleury of Sudbury, Emma Miskew at second and lead Sarah Wilkes – are coming off another solid season.
The No. 1-ranked women’s team in the world has rattled off an impressive 45-4 campaign, with two of those losses coming in the team’s last event prior to the 2025 Scott Tournament of Hearts.
Team Homan claimed five tournament titles this season and was on a 26-game win streak prior to a 7-4 loss to Isabella Wrana at the final Grand Slam event of the year.
The four team members have 36 Scotties appearances between them with Miskew leading the way with 11, one more than Homan who missed the 2022 Scotties due to her mixed doubles appearance with John Morris at the Winter Olympics. Wilkes has eight appearances at nationals and Fleury has competed in seven, finally winning her first Scotties crown last season.
Homan and Miskew have four Scotties titles and two World championships to their names and finished as silver medallists at nationals from 2019-21. The two also represented Canada at the 2018 Winter Olympics at Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Fleury appeared in her first national women’s event by defeating Homan at the 2012 Ontario Scotties, while curling out of the Northern Ontario region prior to joining Homan. Fleury was also the runner-up at the Tim Hortons Canadian Curling Trials in 2021.
Wilkes’s seven previous national Scotties’ appearances included four straight from 2019-22, winning the 2019 event with skip Chelsea Carey, defeating Team Homan 8-6 with a steal of two in an extra end. Wilkes played vice-skip on that team.
Wilkes has two runner-up finishes at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, as an alternate in 2015 with skip Val Sweeting and in 2021 with Homan.
Homan’s alternate is Rachel Brown, who has competed in seven Scotties Tournament of Hearts.
Team Yukon
Bayly Scoffin will make her second-straight appearance at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, but with a lineup change. She is joined by vice-skip Raelyn Helston (who played second in 2024), second Kerry Foster (who moved down from the third position) and new lead Bailey Horte.
Kim Tuor, who played lead last year, will be the team alternate and Kevin Patterson is the team coach.
Scoffin, the younger sister of Montana’s Brier competitor Thomas Scoffin, finished 1-7 at the 2024 Scott Tournament of Hearts, with the only win in an 11-4 romp over New Brunswick. She was also 1-7 at the 2022 New Holland U21 Canadian Championship.
Scoffin also competed in the 2021 Canadian Mixed Doubles Championship with her father Wade Scoffin and competed for the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) team, along with Helston. Scoffin also competed at the 2015 and 2023 Canada Winter Games; 2020, 2022 and 2023 U21 nationals; and 2023 Canadian Colleges Athletic Association championship with SAIT.
Foster will compete in her fourth-straight Scotties, having previously played second with Hailey Birnie. She also competed in the 1996 New Holland U21 Canadian championship and 1995 Canada Winter Games.
Helston was a silver medallist for Alberta at the 2022 U18 nationals and finished third at the national U21 competition that same year. She is also a 2022 Canadian Junior Spirits Award winner and was a quarter-finalist at the 2023 U21 nationals.
This will be Tuor’s fifth Scotties appearance and fourth straight, all previously playing as a lead.
Team Scoffin defended its Yukon championship with a 3-1 series win over Team Patty Wallingham in the best-of-five set, bouncing back from a first-game 6-5 loss with 9-3, 9-5 and 7-4 wins at the Whitehorse Curling Club.
Team Nova Scotia
After losing a tight battle to Heather Smith in 2024, Christina Black will make a return to the Scotties Tournament of Hearts after completing an undefeated run at the seven-team Nova Scotia championship.
Black, with vice-skip Jill Brothers, second Jenn Baxter and lead Karlee Everist, used a three-ender in the seventh to break open another tight game for an eventual 6-4 provincial championship win over Team Mackenzie Mitchell.
Black, with five previous appearances, Brothers with eight and Baxter, with six, all have experience at the national championship. Black is 31-22 at The Scotties, competing as a skip in 2022 and 2023 and a vice-skip in 2018 and 2020. Her best performance came as vice-skip with Mary-Anne Arsenault in 2018 when the team was 10-3. Baxter was a second on that team that won bronze in Penticton, B.C.
Brothers will compete in her eighth Scotties and third in a row as she played second for Andrea Kelly in 2023 in New Brunswick and threw last stones for Smith in 2024. She was a member of the victorious junior team at the 2004 New Holland U21 championship and added a silver at the World Juniors.
Thunder Bay's Everist will compete in her third Scotties Tournament of Hearts, all with Team Black. The foursome tasted some success in 2023 in Kamloops, finishing 5-3 in the round robin, qualifying for a tiebreaker where it stole in an extra end to upset the Team Kaitlyn Lawes’ Wild Card rink.
In the championship round, Team Black again stole in an extra to upend Team Rachel Homan before losing to Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville in the seeding game. Team Black then fell 9–4 to Team Canada’s Kerri Einarson in the Page 3 vs. 4 game, settling for fourth.
Marlee Powers is the team alternate and Stuart MacLean is the coach.
Team British Columbia
Corryn Brown returns for her second-straight trip to the Scott Tournament of Hearts, this time as the B.C. champion after competing last season as a Wild Card.
Having finished as a runner-up at the BC Scotties in 2024, Brown got the job done this season, as the Kamloops-based team – of vice-skip Erin Pincott, newcomer Sarah Koltun and lead Sam Fisher – defeated Kayla MacMillan 10-7 in the provincial final.
This will be Brown’s fourth trip to the national women’s championship. She last won the B.C. crown five years prior and then finished 6-6 at the 2020 Scotties. She returned in 2021 as the defending BC champion, after the provincial championship was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Brown won the 2013 New Holland Canadian U-21 championship with teammates Pincott and Fisher in tow and Brown also earned bronze at the 2012 Winter Youth Olympics.
Pincott was a part of all three of Brown’s previous national women’s championship appearances while this will be Fisher’s third Scotties competition.
Koltun joined the team this season from Kerry Galusha’s disbanded Northwest Territories team. This will be Koltun’s 10th appearance at the Scotties and fourth straight.
To date, Team Brown has produced a 36-25 record in a busy 2024-25 campaign, but started the year 0-5. They enter the Scotties on a 14-2 run, finishing 8-1 at provincials and having a six-game win streak snapped in a 7-4 loss to Selena Sturmay in the final of the Crestwood Platinum Anniversary Showdown in Edmonton just prior to provincial playdowns.
The team is coached by Jim Cotter and the alternate will be Kristen Ryan.
Tickets for the 2025 Scotties Tournament of Hearts can be purchased at https://www.curling.ca/2025scotties/tickets/
