LONDON, Ont. — As homecoming hits Western University during the final full week of September, it’ll be a different kind of homecoming in the Forest City for Team Homan lead Sarah Wilkes.
The Grand Slam of Curling will kick off its 25th season with the Masters, Sept. 23-28 at the Western Fair Sports Centre.
Wilkes, who calls London home, is not only looking forward to playing in her backyard event and welcoming the curling world, but as someone who loves to check out local boutiques and restaurants whenever she’s on the road, she’s super pumped to show off her favourite spots in town.
“I’m really excited just to be able to share where I live with not only my teammates but my competitors and be able to have my family here so easily. Usually, they have to fly wherever we’re going,” Wilkes said during last Thursday’s media event at The Factory in London. “To start the year at home, it’ll just be really nice. I’m looking forward to it.”
This will be the first time London hosts a Grand Slam of Curling event featuring the top 16 men’s teams and top 16 women’s teams from around the world. New this year for the Masters is a Tier 2 division — providing an additional 32 teams with the opportunity to compete and earn valuable ranking points — plus the inaugural GSOC Wheelchair Curling Invitational. Those events will begin at the St. Thomas Curling Club in St. Thomas, Ont., and the KW Curling Club in Waterloo, Ont., respectively, before joining the Masters for the finals on the main stage at the Western Fair Sports Centre.
The Masters will also serve as the first major test of the season for teams with golden aspirations as they prepare for the 2026 Winter Olympics. All teams that have already qualified for Milan-Cortina will compete in the event, while those like Team Homan will look to join the list following the Canadian Olympic curling trials in November.
“It’ll be good to just get on the ice and to compete against these incredible teams,” Wilkes said. “We’ll have to be kind of peaking right away there, but also it’ll just be a learning opportunity to see where we’re at, where we stack up against them right now, and what strides we have to make moving forward towards the trials.”
Although the trials are still three months away, Team Homan will enter as the clear favourite on the women’s side based on the unreal run the Ottawa-based club has been on over the past couple of years.
Team Homan — which also includes skip Rachel Homan, third Tracy Fleury and second Emma Miskew — reached another level during the 2023-24 season, capturing Canadian and world championships, two Grand Slam of Curling titles and finishing the season with a 67-7 record. The team delivered during the encore last season, successfully defending the Canadian and world titles, adding another pair of Grand Slam trophies to the haul and posting a 75-8 mark in women’s competitions.
“It’s been incredible,” Wilkes said. “Just to be able to compete at the level that we’re competing at and to continue to just try to figure out what else we can do to continue getting better because everyone is just constantly getting better.
“Also, just enjoying it while we’re experiencing it because you know in sport that it ebbs and flows. You have lows, you have highs, you have neutral times, so just enjoying it while we have it.”
Team Homan will begin its 2025-26 season in a few weeks at the Shorty Jenkins Classic in Cornwall, Ont., but preparation for this season began almost right after the last one ended in April.
“Ever since the Players’ (Championship), we’ve all been at home doing our off-season training, meeting, doing tactical stuff and looking at our own personal stats as well to figure out what exactly we need to do when we get back on the ice,” Wilkes said. “We actually got on the ice this past weekend to kind of work out the kinks, shake the rust off a little bit. I guess we’re back in it. I know some of the Europeans are curling right now, which is wild, then we’ll head out to Edmonton to get into a big training camp at the end of the month.”
Full-event and weekend passes are now available for the Masters. Visit thegrandslamofcurling.com/tickets for more information.
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