As reigning World Junior Champion skip Fay Henderson prepares for her first season on the senior tour, she knows she has vast experience to rely on.
The 21-year-old from Dumfries will have Olympic gold medallist Hailey Duff alongside her as vice skip and long-established British Curling Coach Nancy Smith in the camp as they get the 2023/24 campaign underway at the Euro Super Series in Stirling this week (August 17-20).
With Katie McMillan (lead) and Amy MacDonald (second) forming the front end of the team, the quartet know they will be tested by opponents who know them well from the off, as they start out against Switzerland’s Team Jaeggi, whose line-up for this week includes Duff’s Olympic skip Eve Muirhead.
Also set to meet her World Junior Championship winning teammates Robyn Munro, Holly Wilkie-Milne and Laura Watt in their second match of the round-robin section of the season’s opening event, Henderson knows she is facing a new challenge this time around. 
“Coming off winning the World Juniors gives me that bit of extra confidence skipping now at ladies level,” she said.
“That was obviously a great achievement, knowing you can perform under pressure but that was last season,” she said.
“This is now all about what we can achieve this season and further down the line.
“It will obviously be a big rivalry game when I meet some of my former teammates in Team Munro and hopefully we can edge our way forward but I expect that to be a tough game.
“It would be really good to put a stamp down from the off, too.
“We played Team Jaeggi in our first game last year as well so we know them and it will be a good game.
“We will see how this line-up goes for this competition.
“There is potential to maybe move things around this season, but we will see what works best and this weekend is a perfect opportunity to try that out.”
Henderson is fully aware that she will now have to operate at a different level, but believes she and her teammates have prepared well, having been back on ice since mid-July.
“We have had a good block of training and are in a good position to test ourselves against the rest of the Europe now,” she reckoned.
“Our coach Nancy obviously brought Team Morrison along in recent seasons and many others over the years, so brings that next step for me in terms of that tactical knowledge into the ladies game and I think she can bring a lot to our team dynamics as well.
“I think ladies is a bit of a different ball game to be honest. 
“You have to anticipate further ahead rather than relying on misses, just got to be that little bit more precise and everyone out there generally has very good tactical knowledge and ice reading.
“So it is hard to get advantages there, which means we just need to be able to work together as a team and gather what information we can.”
As she prepares to compete for the first time since leading her team to victory at the World Juniors, she is aware that there will be additional scrutiny, particularly with the event taking place at British Curling’s training base at the National Curling Academy, but is also looking forward to playing on a facility she knows so well.
“There is a bit of extra pressure being on home ice, but there is an obvious advantage as well especially as we now have about four weeks of training under our belt,” Henderson noted.
“Some of the other teams may have hardly stepped on the ice yet so getting that early head start will put us in good stead for this competition.
“It obviously makes the time away from ice a bit shorter, but we want to curl and we want to win, so for all British Curling teams getting back on ice early in the season is an advantage. It gives us the chance to sort out any technical issues and get a head start on dynamics.
“It is a good field this week, so we are testing ourselves out there against some of the strongest European teams, some of those that you will also see at the Worlds.
“Then we have Oslo next, where we will meet more of those international teams, so the hope is to get a good start on the win/loss record this weekend.”
Games from the ESS event will be live streamed on the British Curling Recast channel.
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Images: WCF/Stephen Fisher
