British Curling has received high praise from the first trans-Atlantic visitors to make a competitive visit to the National Curling Academy (NCA) in Stirling after former Olympic champions Team Shuster and current top ranked US line-up Team Dropkin contested last weekend’s Euro Super Series event.
Korey Dropkin and teammates Andrew Stopera, Mark Fenner and Thomas Howell reached the final of the event, losing out to Italy’s in-form Team Retornaz and their skip admitted to being hugely impressed with what they encountered. 
“This is a beautiful facility,” said Dropkin.
“The set-up that you guys have here is amazing. It’s nice to be able to come here, curl in Scotland for the first time and play on such great ice in great conditions against some real quality teams.
“We got a lot of good things out of playing here this weekend and I’m looking forward to coming back here in the future.”
His team had been forced to battle through the C route of the Triple Knockout event before responding well to the challenge of the play-off stages and even in the absence of British Curling’s World number two ranked Team Mouat, he noted that the depth of quality on show among the home-grown competitors demonstrated the work being done in Stirling.
“There are so many young, bright individuals and teams in Scotland,” said Dropkin.
“The organisation and the programme that Scotland has here is something to look up to.
“All of these young teams, it’s pretty impressive to see how all these young athletes are growing into the game and becoming so good at such an early age. 
“It’s pretty intimidating, but really motivating to see how good young athletes can get at such an early age.”
All in their twenties, his team has its sights set on the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan/Cortina and Dropkin said there is nothing they want more than to challenge the men they look up to and travelled to Scotland with, saying: “There’s no-one I’d rather play in the finals of the trials than Shuster.”
They out-lasted their fellow Minnesotans at the NCA after Team Shuster was eliminated by Scotland’s Team Bryce in the quarter-finals, but the 2018 Olympic champion echoed his compatriot’s sentiments in enthusing about the quality of the event.
“It’s an amazing facility,” he said of the NCA.
“The ice was fantastic all weekend and easy to make shots on and there are great teams here in Scotland and over here in Europe and we don’t get a chance to do this very often.
“It’s great to see the facilities Scotland has built because we have aspirations at United States Curling of building facilities that are strictly for national team, so to see what you guys have over here is important, because it’s something that has obviously been working really well.” 
That was brought home to him when his defence of his Olympic title ended in the semi-finals at the hands of Team Mouat in Beijing earlier this year, but Shuster explained that his awareness of what is being achieved by British Curling in its efforts to close the gap on traditional curling super-power Canada extended well beyond that.
“More so than the semi-final, the body of work that Team Mouat put in during the last year when they had one of the best curling seasons that any team has had in history has intrigued us for sure,” said the 39-year-old.
“All the rest of us countries, Scotland and the US included, have been working very, very hard to level the playing field with Canada which has been the world power forever. So, to see how much success all of the British teams have had last year at the Olympics and the Mixed Doubles Worlds was really interesting.
“There is a lot of depth here in this country and that’s kinda the hope, that you build a place like this and you develop that depth, starting at the junior level. To see how many juniors have progressed from juniors into the men’s is something that every country is aspiring to do and it’s pretty impressive.”
And like Dropkin he indicated that this first trip to the NCA will be far from their last.
“It’s always fun to come over here and play against the teams we see at World Championships, because we haven’t played in Europe a lot, but we really enjoyed it and my guess is you’ll probably be seeing us back,” he said.
