The Hamilton Curling Club will be competing in the 2025 USA Curling College Championships in Midland, Michigan on March 6 through March 9. The team is composed of Connor Whynott ’25, Charlie Haberstock ’25, Nate Cohen ’25 and Jonathan Nemetz ’25. Ranked seventh in the Northeast Regional Championships (excluding this year’s two regional champions), Hamilton has notched their spot in the competition to compete for the title of best in the country. This will be their first appearance since 2023.
The qualification was by no means a given. Fielding a team throughout the season was particularly challenging due to the limited number of players who consistently came to practices and were able to make it to tournaments. The team had 12 players on the roster, with only nine who attended at least one tournament, compared to other schools with over twenty players on their rosters. While some other colleges came to tournaments with multiple teams competing for points, Hamilton sometimes was forced to split points by borrowing players from other colleges. Other times, Hamilton brought curlers with little to no tournament experience after players dropped out, relying on new players to help earn the team points. However, due to the team’s hard work and the commitment of their players, they were able to narrowly edge out Yale University’s team for the region’s final qualifying spot.
Co-President Whynott was anxious leading up to the announcement of regional qualification. “I kind of had a pit in my stomach all week until we got that official ‘standings are out’ message. But we were really excited…we were all congratulating each other, but it was definitely a big relief and a big weight off all of our shoulders.”
Throughout the season, the team has rotated through different positions in both practices and tournaments, with the hope of best preparing everyone for a larger variety of in-game situations and allowing players to develop a better sense of strategy for all facets of the game. However, heading into the College Championships, each of the four players traveling to Michigan have found their separate roles that work best for them. Nemetz will play as Lead, Haberstock will play as Second, Cohen will play as Vice and Whynott will play as Skip.
Co-President Cohen talked of the team chemistry that the team shares due to the tightly-knit committed group of four players that have taken the lead on making the team as good as they can be. “We work really well together. We’re all friends now…everyone’s always patting each other on the back, there’s always a lot of fist bumps–there’s a lot of good camaraderie. We have good team energy and we support each other. Charlie, myself and Connor have all been playing since freshman year. Jonathan joined last year and he’s very well integrated as well, so it’s a good group.”
The team aims to make the most of their remaining time together before Nationals to best prepare for the upcoming high-level competition. Whynott said, “A lot of it’s doing situations that we’ll see at Nationals, like putting ourselves in game-situations and making sure we can execute what we need to do…and we’re also going to be going over some film, watching some previous matches with our coaches and seeing what strategies we want to do differently.”
Practicing every Sunday at the local Utica Curling Club, the team has made great progress in strategy and in skill thanks in large part to the leadership of Mary Jane Walsh and Roger Rowlett, who help coach various college curling teams located in central New York. They will be traveling with the team to Michigan to provide them support.
Riding their season record of 16.5-15.5 and their success at Regionals, where they played some of their best games of the season, the team will be heading to the 2025 USA Curling College Championships in Midland, Michigan where they will compete from Friday, March 6 until Sunday, March 9.
